Legacy
by ActressCeCe
Summary: When her father dumps Katy Jessevar in a boarding school in Whitfield, she has no idea that fate has just opened the door to both her future and her past. Nearly everyone in Whitfield is a witch, as is Katy but she's hiding it. With dark forces converging on Whitfield, it's up to Katy to unravel her family's secrets to save the boy she loves and the town itself from destruction.
1. Transfiguration

**A/N: I am going to take a shot at a Harry Potter & Witch and Wizard crossover story. I won't be using the names of the characters in the original stories but you'll be able to figure out who is who as the story goes on. I have this almost completely written and I will update whenever I get a review or two chapters a week. I hope you like it!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter books or movies or Witch & Wizard**

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**CHAPTER 1: TRANSFIGURATION**

I was sixteen years old when I discovered exactly who – and what – I was. Before then, I suppose I wasn't much of anything, just a girl who'd somehow managed to spend most of my life in southern Florida without becoming blonde, athletic, or comfortable with boys.

I'd lived with my father, who did his level best to turn me into the biggest geek in Palm Beach. His main contribution to my discovering myself was to ditch me in a boarding school fifteen hundred miles from everything I knew. _Thanks_.

I brought my hands to my face and tried to warm them with my breath as I waited for the car that was hired to pick me up at Boston's Logan Airport.

I was being sent away because my dad didn't want me anymore.

That's what he always did when he felt uncomfortable about something. He just stopped thinking about it. He'd done that with my mother after she died. And maybe before. By the time I was old enough to ask questions, he'd already banished her from his memory.

I'd only ever seen one picture of her. It was a sticky, worn photo that I saved from the trash after my dad had tried to throw it out. I reached for the photo in the front pocket of my purse. We had the same eyes. Strange eyes, everyone says, although I don't think they're so weird. I held the picture and waited for the familiar flood of feelings to wash over me. It was like I could feel everything she felt that day – how she was crazy in love with my father. And torn about leaving her family to be with him. And afraid of fire . . .

_Beeep beep beeeeep_. The blare of a horn tore me from my thoughts. Whitfield Airport Limo had arrived. _Classy_. I slouched into the backseat of the decades-old Crown Vic.

"You ever been to Whitfield before, Miss?"

"Huh?" I looked up to see the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror. They were a piercing blue beneath wild, shaggy white brows. He looked as if he'd spent the last fifty years facing down nor'easters.

"Whitfield," he repeated. "Guess it'll take a little getting used to, after New York City."

"I'm not from New York," I said glumly. "My father got a job there."

The skin around the old man's eyes crinkled into a kind smile. "So you're heading out on your own, is it?"

I turned away. I wasn't heading out on my own. I was being discarded. There was a difference.

"But you could look at it that way, couldn't you?"

My head snapped up in irritation. "Excuse me?"

"Whitfield may not seem like a very exciting place at first, but you'd be surprised at how much we've got going on here." He winked.

Right, I thought. Whitfield, Massachusetts, the fun capital of the western hemisphere.

"Have you heard of Wonderland?" he asked.

"Yeah, I've heard of it." Wonderland was only the biggest retail chain in the world. My dad's loathsome girlfriend was their VP of Public Relations. I heard _nothing but_ Wonderland at home.

"We're going to be getting a new one in town," he said as if I were a child and he was holding out a puppy.

"That's a thrill," I said. As if every podunk town in America didn't have a Wonderland. Or a Kmart, Wal-Mart, or, more likely, all three.

He laughed. "I thought everybody loved Wonderland," he said. "Least, that's what their commercials tell us."

"I'm not much of a shopper," I said.

"And then, we've got the fog," he went on cheerfully, undeterred by my obvious hostility toward his hometown.

"Fog?" I couldn't believe he was telling me that watching fog counted as an activity, second only to shopping at discount department stores in terms of excitement.

"Our fog's been in every edition of Ripley's _Believe It or Not_ since 1929, when Mr. Ripley started writing it."

He was looking at me expectantly in the rearview mirror, so I took the bait.

"What's so special about it?" I asked with a sigh.

"Depends on what you call special." He chuckled. "But it's unusual, that's for sure. Only comes to one spot, in a place we call the Meadow, right in the middle of Old Town. It shows up eight times a year, like clockwork, and always in time for the first day of school. You're going to Ainsworth School, aren't you?"

I took the packet the school had sent me out of my jacket pocket.

"Yes, Ainsworth," I said, reading the return address.

"Forget the name?" He was grinning broadly.

"I guess," I said, confused now. So he wasn't joking. They really did watch the fog come in.

"The public schools are already open. But Ainsworth has a tradition. It waits for the fog."

Perfect. I was entrusting my education to an institution that based its academic schedule, as well as its entertainment, on weather phenomena.

"We're coming into Whitfield's Old Town now," the driver said.

Old was right. Whitfield was a village straight out of Nathaniel Hawthorne, with rows of meticulously maintained stone buildings and three-story framed houses with candles in the windows. The town square was lined with quaint-looking shops selling books and tools and kitchen wares; a combination candy store and café called Choco-Latte; two rustic-but-tasteful eateries; and a storefront with APOTHECARY written across the window.

"The town was founded in 1691 by colonists who'd had it with the Puritans," he announced as if he were a tour guide. "Run off from Salem to the wild tidal waters here, off to Whitfield Bay. If you squint, maybe you can see Shaw Island off to your right."

"Er . . ." I interrupted. "Is the school nearby?"

"Coming right up to it," he said. "By the way, that's the Meadow." He nodded toward the left.

I gasped out loud. Ripley had been right – it was one of the strangest things I'd ever seen, acres of vacant land blanketed by dense fog at least two feet deep, right in the middle of the village square.

"Why is it only in that one place?" I asked.

"If you figure that out, you'd be the first," he said, grinning. "Like I said, Whitfield's more interesting than you might think."

The car stopped in front of a grim-looking building with a discreet sign above the doorway reading: AINSWORTH PREPARATORY SCHOOL, FOUNDED 1691.

"I guess this is the place," I said as I got out of the car. The driver got my bag from the trunk. I tried to give him a tip but he refused.

"Not from our own," he said.

"Um, thanks," I replied.

He tipped his hat. "Good luck to you, Ms. Ainsworth," he said as he got back in behind the wheel.

"I'm not –" I began, but he was already driving away.

_Oh, well_. It didn't make any difference. Hell was Hell. Whatever they called you there didn't matter much. I picked up my bag and headed toward the doorway.

The wind was high and smelled like the sea. September was only half over but this far north, the air was already chilly. I pulled my jacket more tightly around me. It was the heaviest piece of clothing I'd ever owned, but on that blustery New England afternoon it was about as warm as a sheet of wax paper.

I stood there for a moment, blinking away tears as I took in the depressing façade of that dreary brick building. At that moment I felt more cold, lost, and alone than I ever had in my life.

"Welcome home," I whispered before letting myself in.

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**A/N: Thank you for reading! I hope you like it! And remember, 1 review = 1 chapter. If I get two reviews, then two chapters will be posted. Otherwise just wait for Tuesday and Friday, it's up to you! Please check out my other story and vote on my poll! :)**


	2. Initiation

**A/N: Here is the second chapter. I hope you like it! I have decided to update every Tuesday and Friday and of course for every review. Just one chapter a week really isn't fair.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter or Witch & Wizard books**

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**CHAPTER 2: INITIATION**

Inside, I stood at the bottom of an enormous stairway whose white marble steps were so worn with use that they appeared to bow in the middle.

"Gar," I grunted as my suitcase thumped over the mountainous flight, echoing hollowly through the empty halls. The building was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside.

"Anyone here?" I called out.

"Indeed," a woman's voice replied. I looked around. There was no one on the stairway except me. Then she popped up from behind the railing at the top of the stairs with a tinkling laugh.

She looked like a fairy, slim and slight, with big eyes and a chiseled nose.

"Welcome," she said, darting toward me with the quick, quirky motions of a hummingbird. She was young and friendly looking, even though she wore her hair in an old-ladyish bun. "I am Penelope Bean, assistant to the headmistress. You may call me Miss P, if you like." She smiled. "And you are Serenity?"

"I go by Katy," I said quickly.

"Katy?" Miss P mused.

"Yes. My name is Katy Jessevar."

"Jesse –" She looked puzzled. "But you're Serenity Katharine Ainsworth, aren't you?"

"Excuse me?" My father had said something about my ancestors founding the school, but I thought he said they were my mother's relations, not his.

"Well, no matter," Miss P went on. "Come with me." She lead me toward an old-fashioned door made of oak and old glass with the word 'OFFICE' printed in an arc on it. "By the way, perhaps you've noticed that the school year starts much later here at Ainsworth that at most other intuitions."

"Er . . . That's okay with me," I said stupidly.

"We begin each year on September twenty-first to commemorate the opening of the school – which was founded by your ancestor, Serenity Ainsworth. The townspeople here in Whitfield, Massachusetts tend to keep old customs. To balance things out, however, our classes also continue later than other schools – until June twenty-first."

I nodded.

"Well, then," she said brightly. "Let's take care of your paperwork, and then I'll show you around."

Every room at Ainsworth was a little different from every other, whether it was the configuration of the walls, or the view from the large, wavy-paned windows, or the polished wooden floors.

"Here is our chapel," Miss P said, pointing out a plain but restful room with wooden pews and fresh flowers on a stand. "And over here is the library." This was the first room I'd been in that was inhabited. A lot of the students were in here, lounging, on the overstuffed chairs or reading at the study tables.

"Students," Miss P announced, "I'd like you to meet our new enrollee, Miss Katy Ains–" She broke off. "I'm so sorry."

"Jessevar," I reminded her.

"Yes, of course." She blushed. "Katy Jessevar, everyone."

It was the moment I'd been dreading, when I'd be introduced as the new kid and everyone would look me over. A few people smiled. Two or three held up their hands in greeting. A few girls huddled around the September issue of _Vogue_ looked up momentarily to examine me inch by inch assessing how much I'd paid for my jeans, rolling their eyes at my Converse sneakers.

Then I saw him. Tall and lean, with honey-colored hair that flopped in a wave over deep-set, intense eyes. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was staring at me. Not just looking, flat out _staring_. I felt my cheeks burning. Working up my courage, I smiled.

The boy kept staring. He raised his chin a fraction, and I saw now that his smoky eyes weren't friendly. Not even a little bit.

"Ainsworth," he hissed. He said it softly, but I heard it. Afterward, the only sound in the room was the crackle of the fire.

"Would you like to stay in here for a while, Katy?" Miss P asked.

She might as well have asked if I'd wanted to sit on a lit firecracker.

"No," I said, probably too quickly. "I . . . I mean, I think I ought to see the rest of the place first."

"Of course. What was I thinking? We haven't even been to the dorms yet." She smiled. "Katy will see you all again at dinner. I trust you'll invite her to sit with you."

Someone laughed. Not a good sign. Miss P put her hand on my back to show me out. AS we left, I saw her glare at the boy in the corner. He glared right back at her. And me.

Once we were outside, a hum of whispers followed us.

"She shouldn't be allowed to come here," someone snarled.

Are you going to be the one to stop her?" another voice countered. "Or do you want to keep both your nuts?"

Some girls giggled at that, while others shushed him.

"She didn't look so bad."

"She looked like an Ainsworth," someone else said. I recognized the voice. It was him.

I inhaled sharply. _Ainsworth_. That was what the driver of the car that had picked me up at the airport had called me. The same name. The name of the school.

I turned to Miss P. "Why . . ." I began, feeling my cheeks redden. "Why are they – "

Before I could get the rest of the words out, she touched my shoulder. "Don't worry about things you can't control," she said softly.

Then she smiled at me so sweetly that I almost believed her.

The closer we got to the dorms, the more students I saw. Fortunately, Miss P didn't introduce me to any of them. "Forgive me, but I'm running a little short on time, and I want to get you settled into your room."

"My room?" I questioned. I was expecting an orphanage-type ward with twenty cots lined up next to each other, like the drawings in the _Madeline_ books.

"At Ainsworth, all the rooms are singles," she said. We turned down a short hallway and into a vacant space, where she turned on the light. "Here it is, Katy," she said, opening a pair of shutters over a window with a tiny stained glass panel at the top.

I was stunned. Outside was a breathtaking view of a lake with a weeping willow on the far bank. Nearby was a small rowboat shaded by big trees whose leaves were beginning to change into fall colors. It was like a scene from a postcard.

"The change of seasons is lovely here," Miss P said wistfully. "You'll be able to see it all."

I would, but that didn't mean I wanted to.

The only items inside the room were a small dresser, a desk, and a bed covered by a down comforter.

"I understand you have no bedding with you, so that will be provided," she said. "You may decorate it however you like, so long as you damage no surfaces. However, the décor must be reasonably tasteful and inoffensive to the common sensibility."

"I understand," I said.

"The lavatory and showers are shared, and you'll find them down the hall to the right. Mealtimes are at seven in the morning, twelve noon, and six in the evening in the main dining room."

I nodded.

"Speaking of meals, all new students are invited to lunch tomorrow at Hattie's Kitchen. Have you heard of it?"

I shook my head.

"Then you're in for a treat," she said, smiling. "Hattie's is a little restaurant in the Meadow."

"The Meadow? Is that the place that's covered in fog?" I asked.

"Exactly. Whitfield's claim to fame."

"I didn't see a building on it."

"Probably because of the fog. And it's not even very dense yet. Once the fog really rolls in, no one will see Hattie's at all." She laughed. "But we all know where it is. It's a charming place, and Hattie herself is as much a part of the school community as we are. We like to say that at Hattie's you always get what you need." Her eyes sparkled. "Well, if you don't have any questions, I'll leave you to unpack." She nodded and started to walk away, but something was sticking in my mind.

"Um, Miss P?"

She turned toward me. "Yes, Dear?"

"I was wondering . . . about my name. Everyone here seems to think it's Ainsworth."

She smiled. "It's a natural mistake, Katy. You see, the Ainsworth women traditionally keep their names. It's their husbands who change theirs."

"What?"

"It's not so strange, really. The Japanese used to do it regularly, to maintain a family line."

"The women never change their names?"

"Not if their name is Ainsworth. But clearly that's not the case with you, so we'll just forget about it, shall we?"

"Okay," I mumbled.

"And by the way, your legal name, Serenity, . . ."

"Ugh."

". . . is one that is very well respected here."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Serenity Ainsworth founded our school. She was a teacher in England, and taught the children of Whitfield as soon as the land here was settled. She was, by all accounts, an extraordinary woman."

"I see."

Miss P smiled again. "We'll still call you Katy, though."

I relaxed. "Thanks."

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**A/N: Thank you for reading, please review! :)**


	3. Empress

**A/N: I guess there isn't anything to be said except for, I now present, Chapter 3!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter books**

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**CHAPTER 3: EMPRESS**

As soon as she was gone, I fell back on the bed, exhausted. I hadn't slept much during the past three weeks. Or the past three months, really.

I turned my head to look out the window. A breeze was sending ripples over the lake. Somewhere a woodpecker was _klok-klok-kloking _like crazy, and from far away I could smell the salt air of the ocean. I closed my eyes. Strangely, I felt safer in this room where I'd been for approximately seven minutes than I had for almost as long as I could remember. Oh, I knew I'd probably have a hard time fitting in with the other students – nothing new there – but things like that didn't rattle me anymore.

Not after Madam Mim.

Her name was Madison Lee Mimson or, as I'd dubbed her, Mad Madam Mim, after a crazy sorceress in an animated Disney movie. But she was worse than a cartoon monster. She was Grendel. Mim was the Beast, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, Lex Luthor, Saruman. The motherlode of horrors. And the number one reason I was stuck in Whitfield, Massachusetts, for the foreseeable future.

As VP of public relations for Wonderland, Mim represented "the interests of Wonderland" up and down the East Coast. I'll never know exactly how she met my father, but within days they were shacked up and some weeks later, Dad and I were on our way to New York to start our "new lives." After years of teaching at a series of small Florida colleges, Dad had gotten an assistant professorship gig at Columbia. Major strings must have been pulled for that. And where there were major strings, there was Mim doing the pulling. It was during the plane ride up that Dad decided to let me in on his plans for my future.

"We . . . that is, _I've_ found a school for you, Katherine." Dad looked serious.

Something in his voice made me shiver. He wouldn't make eye contact. "Where is it?" I asked quietly, carefully.

He cleared his throat. "It's a . . . it's a boarding school, Katherine."

"A boarding school?" I squeaked. "Where?"

"It's a fine place, really –"

"But why do I have to live there? How far away is it from you? And _her_."

A long moment passed. Too long. "It's in Whitfield, Massachusetts," he said finally. He looked out the window.

"I see," I said.

"Let me explain." He put his hand over mine. I yanked it away. "There are some things I've never told you, Katherine. About your mother. And her family."

_My mother?_ He had never spoken a word about her. I inclined my head slightly, listening, though I wouldn't look at him. "Go ahead," I whispered.

"Agatha – your mother – er, went to school at Ainsworth. That's the name of the school where you'll be going. Her family founded it, in fact." He smiled. "Which is why they're willing to accept you at no charge."

I felt my jaw clench. "Are you telling me –" my voice caught, that you're dumping me in some Dickensian institution in fricking Massachusetts BECAUSE IT'S _FREE_?"

The people in the row next to us turned to stare.

"Katy Baby –"

"Excuse me," I said and went to the restroom, where I spent the rest of the flight.

Mim was waiting for us at her Sutton Place apartment. She was blonder than she'd been in Florida, and dressed in a silk-and-lace camisole and jeans, trying to look like the teenager in the family.

"Hi, Kathy," she bubbled.

"Katy."

"Riiiiight. So, nice to see you."

She showed us around the apartment, pointing out all the tacky, expensive details that were supposed to impress us.

"And here's where you'll sleep, Kay-Kay," Mim said cheerily, gesturing inside a leather-appointed office strewn with papers. "The couch is really comfy."

"Kay-Kay will be fine here," I said dully. I went inside and closed the door.

That night I tried to sleep but it was a losing battle. This was supposed to be the quietest address in Manhattan, but it still sounded like a jet runway to me. And the leather couch I was lying on was covered with buttons that stabbed into my flesh like pokers. I spent most of the night reading through Mim's work memo's, which was how I found out that Wonderland Corp. was considering opening a store in Whitfield, Massachusetts.

So I knew whose idea this really was.

_Who does she think she is?_ I kicked over a pile of papers. I was so furious I couldn't see straight. _It's my father! My life! _I shoved the files littering Mim's desk on the floor. Papers were whirling around the room everywhere. Still I wasn't satisfied. I felt all the anger I'd been penning in about Mim, Dad, and school bubble up from the very center of my being until it was shooting out my hands, my fingertips, my eyes. I concentrated on her papers until they swirled into a cone, very attractive, very neat, like the funnel of a tornado. Then, when they were all in motion, I pushed them with my mind out onto the busy street.

_Bite me, Wonderland_.

"Why couldn't you?" I heard Mim saying. She had two voices, I'd learned: The throaty, sexy blonde voice she use with my father, and her Wonderland voice, the sound of corporate fingernails against a blackboard. It was demanding. It was confrontational. And it carried.

It was the Wonderland voice I was hearing now. I opened the door a crack.

"You had every chance to explain things on the plane."

"Keep it down, please. She's asleep."

"You've been protecting her far too long, Harrison."

"She's my baby, Madison. She doesn't need to know everything."

"Is it better that she find out from the other students?"

"It was a long time ago, Madison. My guess is no one will even remember."

"Not remember? It was all over the national news! For the past ten years, Wonderland has been paying through the nose for that woman's insanity, and that girl –"

"Her name is Katherine, and she is my daughter."

"Then _Katherine_" – she spat out my name as if it were an insect that had flown into her mouth – "had better be prepared with a believable story."

"You mean _your _story," Dad put in sharply. "The story your staff wrote to make Wonderland seem like a superhero fighting against a demonically possessed woman."

My breath caught. Who were they talking about?

"It's for her own good, Harrison. If she appears sweet and humble, everything will go easily. With that angelic face, she can carry it off. It can work, a win-win situation all around. We're saying, yes, her mother may have been criminally insane –"

_What?_

"But things are different thanks to –"

"Wonderland," Dad said cynically.

"Thanks to the forgiving community of Whitfield," Mim finished. "And Wonderland." She giggled.

I pushed. Their door slammed open.

"What was that?" Mim asked.

Dad appeared in the doorway down the hall, wearing a silk robe. "What are you doing awake?" he asked, annoyed.

"'Criminally insane'? 'Demonically possessed'?"

He stared at me for a moment, looking scared at first, and then defeated. Without answering, he closed the door.

We never discussed it again. Dad started teaching at Columbia, Mim worked sixteen hours a day, and I stayed in "Kay-Kay's" room. Three weeks later, a taxi picked me up and took me to LaGuardia Airport.

That was how easy it was for Mim to take my dad away from me.

Slowly I sat up and keyed in his cell phone number. The phone rang for a long time before his voicemail message came on. Of course.

"This is Dr. Harrison Jessevar. Please leave your name and number and the reason for your call."

"Hi Daddy," I said. "I got here safely, in case you care." I hesitated. There must have been something else to say. There must have been, but I couldn't figure out what it was. "Bye," I whispered.

Mim took him, but I guess he hadn't been hanging on very tight to begin with.

I curled into a ball on the bed and cried.

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**A/N: Please review and check out my poll and other story Sugar Plum Princess. Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it! :-)**


	4. Cakes & Ale

**A/N: I just realized that I forgot to update last Friday. I am so sorry about that and I hope that this chapter makes up for that. I am a little disappointed by the lack of response but I guess that it just takes time. Thank you for those who read this! Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Witch & Wizard.**

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**CHAPTER 4: CAKES & ALE**

The first thing I saw when I woke up the next morning was a pair of cardinals perched on my windowsill. Behind them, the water on the lake looked pink in the dawn light. Even my memories of yesterday's debacle in the school library had receded somewhat after a decent night's sleep in a place other than Madam Mim's home office.

That afternoon I walked through the fog, which was thicker that it had been the day before, to a little building that looked as if the Seven Dwarfs might have lived there, with sloping, rounded eaves, stucco walls, and windows with hundreds of little square panes separated by black leading. Over the Romanesque door was a sign in rounded script: HATTIE'S KITCHEN.

Inside, it was everything Miss P said it would be, charming without the self-conscious cuteness of places with names like Ye Olde Pubbe. The wooden chairs were big and sturdy and comfortable, four to a table. The windows looked out on every side except for the one facing the street so that, like the school, it gave the sense that the place was in the country, not in a town at all.

I was seated at a table against a wall with two other students, a girl named Verity Lloyd who wore striped tights and a beret, and a boy with white-blonde hair that looked as if it had been electrified.

"Cheswick," he said, formally extending his hand to me.

"Uh . . . is that your first name?" I asked.

He nodded crisply. "Cheswick Fortescu."

That figures, I thought. I wasn't going to it bring up with these two, but from what I'd seen, the student body at Ainsworth seemed to be divided into two distinct groups. There were the typical boarding school types, rich kids with cool clothes and names like Muffy. But the second group was totally different – not just different from the Muffies, but different from any kids I'd ever met.

They were definitely geeky, but not public school geeky. For one thing there were a lot of them, at least half of the student body. Most were local. Some stayed at the school even though their families lived right in town.

But there weren't a million varieties of geeks like there had been at Las Palmas where the halls teemed with Emo kids wearing black eye makeup and tight pants; techno geeks; audiophiles; the Anime freaks; goths; theater nerds; and the kids who wrote poetry and listened to music groups like Coldplay and Starsailor, the types I called QMSes, or Quivering Masses of Sensitivity.

None of these would describe the geek faction at Ainsworth. They were, rather, _confident _geeks, if there was such a thing. Kids who dressed exactly how they felt and were proud of it, who didn't hate school, or their parents, or even the village they lived in. These were hard-core townies, unapologetic and united. A _tribe_ of geeks.

Not that I was a part of that tribe. So far, no one except Miss P and Cheswick Fortescu have even said hello to me.

"Have you ever been here before?" Verity asked me.

"No." I looked around. At the table next to us a couple in their twenties was arguing. They were so truly angry with each other that I could almost see sparks flying out of their mouths. "Did anyone get a menu?"

Cheswick laughed, his dandelion-puff hair bouncing. "Nobody gets a menu here," he said. "You just get what you need."

"And you never know what it's going to be," came a deep woman's voice from behind my shoulder.

With a gasp I turned around to see a beautiful middle-aged African-American woman standing over me. She was very tall, with gorgeous silver-streaked hair that looked as if it had never been cut. Pushed back behind her ears, it hung in dreadlocks to below her waist, interrupted only by a pair of big gold hoop earrings.

"Well, looky here," she said, grinning at me. "An Ainsworth."

Again? _Seriously?_

"Actually –"

"And a beauty, too!" Her eyes widened. "Could you be little Serenity. all grown up?"

I felt myself melting with embarrassment, while making a mental note to complain to Miss P for babbling about students' personal details.

"My name's Katy. Katy Jessevar."

"Katy Jessevar," she repeated slowly. Then she burst into peals of loud laughter. "Trying to be someone else," she said. "Why? Don't you like who you are?"

I didn't know what to say. I wished the sky would open up an hurl me into another dimension.

"Don't be afraid," she said, touching my cheek. Her hands were rough and bony and warm. "You don't even know who you are yet, but I do. Your eyes tell me everything."

I smiled wanly. She laughed again. So did the others at my table.

The woman chatted with the two of them for a while before moving on to the other new students, but when she passed by on her way to the kitchen, she gave me a big wink.

"That's Hattie," Cheswick said.

"I figured." I folded my hands so that no one would see how they were shaking.

"It's always a little scary the first time you meet her," Verity said kindly. "My parents said I cried."

"Yeah, I can see that as a possibility," I conceded.

"Hey, over there." Cheswick was gesturing with his chin toward another table, where an old man was sitting alone, eating soup and biscuits.

"What is it?" Verity whispered.

"Look what just came in the door."

It was a dog, a spotted little fellow with a jaunty walk and a big canine grin. It made its way directly to the old man and sat down next to him.

The old gent took a while to notice the dog, but when he did his wizened face broke into a broad, toothless smile. "And who might you be, sir?" he asked in the too-loud way of people who are hard of hearing.

"Woof!" the dog barked in answer, jumping up onto the chair opposite. The man howled with delight. At that moment, a server placed a bowl of kibble in front of the dog, who gobbled it up with gusto. It was a very weird sight, the old man and the dog sitting across the table from each other like old friends playing cards.

"He got what he needed," Cheswick said.

"They both did," Verity added.

"Are dogs allowed in here?" I asked, knowing instantly how lame I sounded.

They laughed. "Everything's allowed here," Cheswick whispered conspiratorially.

The fighting couple was served cake. Within minutes they were eating off each other's forks and playing footsies under the table. Talk about magic.

"Everyone gets what they want?" I asked.

"What they _need_," Verity corrected, accepting a platter of tofu with a sigh. "I just wished I liked tofu."

Cheswick hit the jackpot with a cheeseburger and fries. I was eyeing it longingly when my meal came – a tuna fish sandwich.

"Isn't it fabulous?" Verity asked, scarfing down her tofu. "Mine is."

"It's okay." I mean, tuna's tuna. It's not like it turned into the nectar of the gods or anything.

I was trying not to drool as Cheswick inhaled his cheeseburger when my foot came across something on the floor. It was a book, a blank book filled with handwriting. I looked at the first page. _Peter Shaw_, it read. _#412_.

"Do you know this person?" I asked.

"Sure," Verity said between mouthfuls. "He's one of us."

"Would you take this to him?"

"Just give it to Hattie," she said.

Since I'd finished my sandwich – it was disappointingly small, with the crusts cut off – I excused myself and took the book into the kitchen, where a staggering number of different platters lined every surface. Hattie was hovering over them all, adding radish here, a cheese crisp there. In the background, loud reggae music made it seem as if all the dishes were dancing along, moving of their own accord.

"Um, ma'am," I mumbled, way too low for her to hear me.

"Yes!" she answered, whirling around to face me. "Ah, the girl with the false name," she said. "You were not happy with your meal, then?"

"No," I said. "I mean, yes. It was fine. I like tuna."

She laughed. "Good. Do you think that you could make such a sandwich yourself?"

I blinked. It was a strange question. "I guess so," I said. "I used to cook for my dad. I can make a few things."

"Good, good."

"Er . . ." I held out the book to her. "This was under my table. It says it belongs to Peter Shaw."

"Ah, Peter, yes. You can take it to him."

I hesitated.

"He's in room 412."

"Yes, I saw that –"

"Fine. I'll speak to Miss P about you. Come back soon!" She blew me a kiss.

I stumbled out, not sure exactly what had transpired. Verity and Cheswick were waiting by the door for me. "She told me to give it to this guy Peter," I said. "So if you're going to see him . . ." I held the book up, hoping one of them would take it from me and say that they would return it.

"She told _you_ to give it to him," Verity said.

"All right, all right." Jeez, I thought, what sticklers. I was still resentful over the cheeseburger.

I left the two of them at the gym – they were both runners – promising I'd see them at dinner, and then began the long trek to room 412, which naturally was at the very end of the last hall on the fourth floor in the very most distant wing of the school. No wonder Verity and Cheswick had refused to help. I hoped Peter Shaw, whoever he was, would appreciate the effort I was making to return his stupid notebook.

I knocked. As soon as the door cracked open, I knew exactly who would be there: Of course, with my luck, of _course_, it would be – and it was – the nasty boy from the library.

_That's great_, I thought as his scowling face came into view. _Just great_.

"I found this in Hattie's Kitchen," I said, holding out the book. "She told me –"

"Thank you," he said coldly. He took the book from me and then, in the same motion, pushed the door so that it would close in my face.

"Hey," I said, pushing it open again. "What the Hell's going on with you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"No?" I coughed, hoping to produce a few molecules of saliva. "Well, maybe we can start with that name you and your buddies keep calling me."

He took a step back, looking as if he were totally surprised. "What, Ainsworth?"

"That's it. Look, whoever you think I am –"

"I _know _who you are, all right?" he bristled. "Even if you pretend you don't."

"I'm not pretending anything. And I've never met you in my life."

He frowned. Two spots of pink appeared on his face beneath the smoky gray of his eyes.

"Whatever," he said. "Are we done here?"

We weren't, but I felt the corners of my lips quivering, and I didn't trust my voice. That stupid boy was making me cry. It was just so _unfair_. I hadn't done anything, except exist. And that was apparently wrong.

"I'll take that as a yes," he said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Miss _Jessevar_, I'll say goodbye. Have a nice day."

He closed the door.

"You too, Jerkface," I muttered.

Why hadn't I just slipped the damn notebook under the door?

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**A/N: Another chapter will be posted on Friday. Please review!**


	5. Alchemy

**A/N: Here is the fifth chapter. Please enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or Witch & Wizard. **

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**CHAPTER 5: ALCHEMY**

_The world is full of horrible people_," I thought philosophically. After all I'd lived with two of them. My dad finally acknowledged my phone call. He didn't call me back, though. He sent me an email.

_**Congratulations on beginning your new school term. Never use the phrase "In conclusion."**_

_** HJ**_

Yeah, miss you too Dad.

Still, it was the first day of classes, so I wasn't going to let anything upset me. Dweeby as it sounds, I always enjoyed the start of a new school year, probably because I was usually the best student in every class.

And who knew? I might even make some friends. If I avoided the library, I reasoned, I'd probably never have to see Peter "Sunshine" Shaw again.

Until my first class. There he was, his long limbs folded into one of the antiqued desks, scowling at me from behind the sociology textbook, _Communities in Transition_, as I walked into the classroom.

He was in my algebra class too. Also European history. Wherever I went, it seemed, I was subjected to his snarling if painfully attractive visage. I was beginning to formulate a new philosophical thought: _Contrary to historical belief, horrible people often look really good. _

During the next few weeks I tried to eradicate Peter Shaw's hate-filled countenance from my mind by concentrating on my coursework. Ainsworth was academically a lot better than my old school Las Palmas High could ever hope to be. There were electives, for one thing, just like in college.

I got into a course in, of all things, medieval alchemy. I had no idea what that would cover, but I'd done a lot of reading on medieval literature (Dad's specialty), so I thought I'd be okay. The other weird class I got into was called Existentialism in Fiction. That sounded pretty hard for a high school course, but it was the only elective available when I registered. But at least Verity and Cheswick signed up for that one too.

Unfortunately, so did Peter Shaw.

Like I said, no justice.

At first I thought that maybe I was being paranoid about him disliking me. But I wasn't. If he got to class after I did he made a point of sitting as far away from me as possible. And if he got there first he'd make sure to surround himself with people so that I couldn't sit anywhere near him.

As if I would, anyway. I'd been around long enough to know that lying low was usually the key to not having your lunch money stolen, your cell phone thrown in the toilet, or your locker decorated with colorful epithets. The thing was, though, that I didn't think Peter Shaw was one of _those_ kids. I mean, granted, having a cute boy practically gag at the sight of me wasn't my favorite fantasy under any circumstance, but it might have been understandable if Peter was the star quarterback or Homecoming King or something.

But he wasn't any of those things. He was, if anything, as far as I could tell, the King of the Geeks, even though he looked more like a movie star or the front man for a rock band. He was tall and thin and had perfect skin and wild, wavy hair the color of dark gold. He had gray eyes and the kind of thick black eyelashes you sometimes see on little kids. He had big hands with long fingers like a pianist's, and a soft voice and an easy laugh.

Not that I paid much attention to him.

Well, okay, I did. But I couldn't help it. He was just very visible, in addition to being very gorgeous. The Muffies were always hanging around his locker or walking with him to class, asking him to help them with their homework. But he didn't seem to gravitate toward that crowd. It was the geeks who surrounded him most of the time, an army of them, protecting him as if he were their god. Any Muffies who wanted a crack at him had to first penetrate the geek lines of defense.

And he wasn't stupid, either. I could tell from the things he said in Existentialism in Fiction that he thought about ideas in a way that most of the guys I knew didn't. Like when the teacher, Mr. Zeller, asked what Sartre meant in _No Exit_ when he wrote that Hell is other people, Peter said that he thought every kind of suffering came from other people, even if they were people you loved, and that sometimes loving someone caused more pain than hating them.

I could imagine the response if anyone else had said that. But Peter got away with it. No eye-rolling, no snickers, no barking of "loser!" beneath the guise of a cough. Even I didn't write "QMS" on my notebook because I knew that he wasn't a Quivering Mass of Sensitivity, and he wasn't just talking to be heard.

On the other hand, he'd also said that some people weren't worth going to Hell over, at which point all his cronies turned to look at me.

Strangely, though, even though he was the primo geek god in the Ainsworth pantheon, Peter didn't hang with the geeks outside of school. Sometimes I'd see him running track with Verity and Cheswick – both definitely in the protective inner circle, as it turned out – and occasionally I'd see him studying in the library (on those occasions I'd leave as soon as possible, before the geek army got around to pushing my books onto the floor or making fart noises around me), but that was about as far as his social interaction with them went. He rarely showed up for after-school clubs, and never for dinner. Never. And he wasn't picked up by his parents, either. On Fridays the visitors' lounge would be teeming with local kids whose parents had come to take them home or out to dinner, but Peter was never among them. It seems that he just vanished every weekend, the way he vanished every evening.

I thought about asking Verity and Cheswick where he went, but they had closed ranks against me. I'd been in school for nearly four weeks, and still no one was speaking to me. V and C would occasionally grant me a quick hello, as long as they weren't near any of their friends, but if Peter were to be around, they'd sneer at me along with the rest of them. It was as if he had ordered everyone to shut me out, and they all obeyed.

The worst of it was I couldn't even say that Peter was just a prick. Because he wasn't. As much as I hated to admit it, he really seemed like a decent person . . . with everyone except me, that is.

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**A/N: Thanks for reading! Please check out my other story Sugar Plum Princess and vote on my poll. Another chapter next Tuesday unless I get a review. They make me happy!**


	6. Cauldron

**A/N: Sorry for putting this on hiatus, but I really needed to. I hope this chapter makes up for the wait. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter Series or Witch & Wizard.**

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**CHAPTER 6: CAULDRON**

I might have spent the rest of the year feeling sorry for myself if Miss P hadn't offered me an after-school job at Hattie's. I didn't want it at first – it had never been one of my big dreams to be a kitchen grunt – but at least it would take my mind off what a social failure I was at Ainsworth.

"Come in, and welcome!" Hattie looked up from a pile of bright green scallions to smile at me. "So you've come to help me cook?"

The music – it was the Rolling Stones this time – was so loud I could barely hear her. "Yes ma'am," I shouted.

"My name is Hattie, not Ma'am. And I will call you Katy, as you wish."

"Thank you," I said, though I'm sure she didn't hear me over the sound of Mick Jagger.

"Wash your hands and put on and apron. There, by the sink."

That's how it started. No application, no time clock. I didn't know how long I was expected to stay, or even if I would get paid. All I knew was that I'd been ordered to work here, and I was in no position to refuse.

"Now," Hattie said, tossing the scallions into a pot. "Are you clean? Good. You can start with tuna."

"Like a sandwich?" I shouted.

"Just like what you had, m'dear. But make it your own way. With love."

Love. Right. I scrambled around the kitchen concocting what I hoped was the perfect sandwich.

"Is this okay?" I asked once I finished.

She frowned. "Very pretty," she said. "But where is the love?"

I blinked. "Love?"

"Yes, yes," Hattie said. "After all, the Ainsworth women understand all about love. They have made it into an art." Her brows knitted together. "Now concentrate!"

Totally intimidated, I tried to focus on the sandwich. What did I love about it, I asked myself. It was good bread, okay. And I liked celery, but I couldn't honestly say that I absolutely _loved_ it. I suppose a tuna somewhere had given its life for this sandwich, and I knew a few vegans who could work up tears over that, but still . . .

"No, no, no!" Hattie snatched the plate out of my hands and propelled me toward the swinging doors leading to the dining room. "Come with me."

At three-thirty in the afternoon, the place was still pretty empty. The old man I'd seen during my first visit here was sitting at a corner table across from his dog, who seemed to be communicating with a series of grunts, growls, and some occasional muffled barking. They both appeared to be having a good time, absolutely engrossed in whatever strange conversation they were sharing.

"That's Mr. Haversall and Dingo. They come in every day now," Hattie said. "But _this_ is your customer."

She led me to a sour-looking man wearing glasses and a pinstripe suit.

"It's about time," he said. He took one look at the sandwich I'd made and threw down his napkin. "You've got to be kidding. A _sandwich_? What sort of scam are you running here? I suppose you're going to charge me as much for that . . . that _snack_ as you would for a steak."

"That's right Sir," Hattie said pleasantly.

"Well I'm not going to eat it."

I looked over at her, appalled. She gave me a wink. "That would be up to you Sir."

"Well. I _never_!" He made a move to stand up, but Hattie stopped him.

"Just hold up one second before you go," she said. "Katy, take his hand."

"_What_?!" the customer and I both shouted at the same time.

"Just do it."

His hand was slippery and wet and clammy, just the way I thought it would be. Gross. Out of sheer obnoxiousness I clamped down on it until he gave up with a disgustful _tsk_ and a flutter of pale eyelashes. Hattie was doing the same thing to his other hand, I noticed.

"Isn't this special," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Do it now, Katy," Hattie said. "Love."

Love? Yuck! I didn't want to give love to this cretin. I didn't want to give him jack!

"Do it. Clear your mind."

"Just how long is this session going to take?" the man demanded. "I'd like to include it in the police report."

"Oh brother," I breathed.

"Katy!"

"Okay, okay," I relented. What a stupid job this was turning out to be. "Love huh?" I took a deep breath.

"Any day now," the man sneered.

I cleared his voice from my mind, along with everything else – the noise in the restaurant, the words I was thinking, and even the feelings that were passing through my mind like scarves floating in the wind. Then into this emptiness I envisioned a big red heart that burst open, filling the space with flowers.

Okay, hearts and flowers, I know this was all very corny, but it was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. Anyway, after that I zeroed in on the heart. It was hollow now, showing scenes from the man's life. I watched him being beaten by some impossibly huge man – I guessed that it was how whoever-it-was looked to him when he was small. I saw a young woman laughing at him and pointing at him as if he were a freak. In fact, the word FREAK popped up and bounced around inside the heart like a screensaver on a computer. In the next scene, an old sick woman turned her back to him as he tried to put his arms around her. I saw the woman dying, and this man burying his face in his hands, alone in an empty room.

"Oh," I whispered. I was beginning to understand.

And then it happened: My own heart sort of _shivered_, and then it opened up too, like a flower, and something shiny and warm poured out of it and into his.

"You should have done this a long time ago," I said before I even knew what I'd spoken.

The man's hands were cold and trembling. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, but the harsh words didn't fit his voice, which cracked with uncertainty. He cleared his throat. "Well, I suppose a sandwich wouldn't hurt. You've taken up so much of my time that I'm really . . ." He looked at me with eyes that were filled with sorrow, a dam that had burst. ". . . hungry . . ."

"Take it," I said. "It's what you need."

A slow smile spread across Hattie's face. "We'll leave you to your lunch now," she said, and we all let go of each other's hands.

We were almost back in the kitchen when Hattie poked me in the ribs with her elbow. "Good girl!" she rumbled.

"Wow." I shook my head. "I don't know where that came from."

"No?" she questioned. Her eyes slid sideways toward me.

"Is that what you put in _my_ tuna sandwich?"

She laughed. "Oh no. You needed something different. Very different."

We both pushed open the swinging doors with our hips at the same time. Hattie moved on; I didn't. The door swung back, nearly knocking me over.

_He _was there, in the kitchen, standing in front of me with a crate of lettuce in his hands.

Satan.

Well, almost. Peter Shaw. Actually, he didn't look exactly malevolent, only surprised. Maybe as surprised as I was.

"Oh, Peter," Hattie said breezily. "This is our new helper, Katy."

"Kaaaay," crooned a voice from behind him. It was a child, maybe ten or eleven years old, sitting in what looked like an oversized high chair.

Something was wrong with him. His head lolled to one side. His eyes were crossed. His mouth hung open, and a line of drool ran down the side of his chin in a rough red gully. There were a few broken crayons on the tray in front of him, and a piece of paper with a drawing on it.

"Kaaaay," he repeated, thrusting the drawing toward me.

Hattie dabbed at the drool with a tissue and put her arm around him. "That's right Honey," she said, giving the boy a kiss on the top of his head. "This is Katy, our new friend. Katy, this is Peter's brother, Eric. He lives here."

At the sound of his name, the boy kicked his legs and clapped his hands together. The drawing fell on the floor. I picked it up and gasped.

It was the drawing of birds flying over a lake, and might have been drawn by Michelangelo. The water shimmered. The crayon-colored sky looked so real that I could almost feel the wind moving. The birds themselves were magnificent; each tiny creature muscled and feathered, each sparkling, living eye minutely different from all the others.

"This is unbeliev – " I began, but Eric was twisting around in his chair, shrieking and kicking furiously.

Peter grabbed the drawing out of my hands and smoothed it out in front of his brother.

"Leave him alone," he said.

I backed away.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's just that he's so . . ."

"Brain damaged?" Peter spat. "But then, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"

"I . . . I . . ." I didn't know what to say.

"Hush Peter," Hattie interrupted. "She doesn't know any such thing. Katy, dear, you go cut six tomatoes into slices, and take out some basil. I'll show you what to do with it in a minute."

I scurried away to the large walk-in fridge, stealing glances at Eric and Peter from behind my shoulder.

"Why _her_?" I heard Peter ask as I retreated.

Hattie didn't answer him.

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**A/N: I hope you liked it! Please review and vote on my poll. I am also back to updating regularly. **


	7. Sigillum

**A/N: Sorry for not updating when I said I would. I've decided not to give an exact date because sometimes I don't have the time to update. So now it's just whenever I get the time. Please enjoy the chapter!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or Witch & Wizard**

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**CHAPTER 7: SIGILLUM**

By the last week in October I was an old hand in Hattie's Kitchen, part of a three person crew including Hattie, myself, and my new buddy Peter Shaw. Unlikely as it was, Peter and I managed to stay out of each other's way as we knocked ourselves out to prepare for the annual community Halloween party. Apparently it was an old tradition in Whitfield, as well as the anniversary of the opening of Hattie's, so Halloween was a big deal all around. We spent the week before cooking and freezing enough food for at least two hundred people, and that didn't even count the salads and fruit and sauces and desserts that would have to be made fresh. Since there were only sixteen tables in the dining room, I had no idea how we were going to accommodate everyone.

"Oh don't worry about that," Hattie said, laughing. "There will be plenty of room, you'll see."

I didn't know how that would be possible, but I'd learned not to doubt anything Hattie said.

It hadn't taken long for me to get used to my job. Every day there'd be a new recipe for me to try, usually with some weird component as part of the mix: An antique silver spoon, a handful of rose petals, the branch of a willow tree, a string of glass beads. Even the music she played, I discovered, went into the food. Once Hattie had me cry real tears into a pot of bean soup. That wasn't easy. I don't like to cry. Still, for the sake of the menu, I worked up a few drops.

Also, she was always making me think or concentrate on some emotion or other. "Pick it out of the air," she'd say, as if things were like curiosity and courage were just floating on the breeze, waiting to be snatched up and then tossed into a salad like slices of cucumber.

Everything we used in the kitchen seemed to be infused with some sort of strange spirituality. Strange, but good. Nobody ever left Hattie's Kitchen feeling sad or mean or wishing they'd never been born.

Not even me.

So I just went along and did whatever she told me. If Hattie wanted a custard full of perseverance, I gave it to her.

Besides, most of these "spells" – that's what I called them anyway – were variations on the love bomb I'd given the cranky man in his tuna. Crazy as it seemed, love was becoming my specialty.

Sometimes I wondered if what I was doing was actually as magical as it seemed to be. I mean, I wasn't chanting incantations or burning toads' tongues, but I could actually _feel_ the love I was putting into the food.

Or I thought I could feel it.

I asked Hattie about it once, if what we did had anything to do with magic.

"There is magic in everything," she said in her low, warm voice. "You just have to be able to see it. And to see it, you must first believe that you will see it."

Getting ready for the Halloween party was so hectic that I hardly had enough time to read my emails or do any of the other solitary things that my life used to revolve around. It was as if suddenly my whole world got _bigger_. But it was even more than that: It was as if all my senses were becoming heightened. I could smell the fall air in the food I cooked. I could touch the living heart of a pumpkin or a butternut squash. I could taste the very stars in a sprig of carrot tops. I could hear the song of the sea in the oysters that Peter and I shucked open by the hundreds.

We had arrived at an uneasy but workable truce. That wasn't hard, really, since most of what he did was on the outside – pulling up weeds and rotting stalks from the herb garden, driving Hattie's truck to the docks for seafood, bringing in crates of produce from the market, and hauling out the garbage. On the occasions that we'd have to work together, were usually too busy to do much talking, anyway.

And Eric was always there, drawing those fabulous pictures with his crayon stubs on the backs of paper placemats. I'd never met a sweeter kid in my life. He was irresistible. Every time he held out his little stick-arms to me and yelled "Kaaaay!" I melted. I think I got more hugs from him during our first week together than I'd had in my entire life up till then.

And every time was a weird, unique, and wonderful experience. Eric was all elbows and ribs and flailing head. Whenever I'd go near him, he'd get all excited and kick out his skinny legs, usually connecting painfully with some part of my anatomy, while at the same time grabbing me anywhere he could – my hair was a popular spot – and then crush me to him like his favorite teddy bear.

No one had ever held me like that, as if my being with him were simply the greatest pleasure he could imagine. Or maybe I was just projecting.

At first Peter made a big deal about my not going near his brother, but Eric just insisted on bringing me into their circle, and in time Peter backed off a little. It was a strange quartet, Hattie and Eric and Peter and me. Strange, like everything else in Whitfield.

Halloween didn't start out auspiciously. Eric was sick, so Hattie had to divide her time between the room upstairs and the kitchen which, even at ten in the morning, was a complete nuthouse.

"Of course this would happen on the biggest night of the _year_," Hattie muttered as she carried a stack of pie crusts to the side counter. "Katy, we'll need ten pumpkin, four French silk chocolate, two lemon meringues, and two banana creams. Peter, you start on the vegetables. There's a list on the table. I'll get the bread into the oven."

In place of the usual music, all I heard was the clattering of the pans as I gathered the ingredients I needed for the pie fillings.

"I need a roll of parchment!" Hattie cried.

"Coming up." I dropped what I was doing and dragged a stepladder over to the cabinets. Above the canned goods were dozens of industrial-size rolls of foil and plastic wrap, plus smaller oblongs of wax paper, storage bags of various sizes, take-out boxes, doggie bags, and a variety of liquid containers with lids. "We're in luck," I said, spotting the one remaining roll of parchment. "Hey, what's this?"

There was something behind it, stuck in the corner. From my vantage point on the stepladder it resembled a flattened tree, but when I pulled it out I saw that it was a wall hanging of some kind, with a frayed leather cord that had been snapped in half.

Under the dust and grime I could tell it was a really beautiful thing, a miniature garden trellis filled with climbing dried wildflowers. Along the bottom were some tiny pumpkins flanking a wooden sign with "Hattie's Kitchen" painted on it.

"Look at this," I said, scrambling down with it in my hands. "It'll be perfect for tonight. We'd just have to fix the –"

I don't know what I said after that. I felt a rush in my head as if everything was speeding up and slowing down at the same time. When I looked down I was still holding the wall hanging, but it was perfect. No dust. No dirt. I touched it and turned it over, examining it on all sides. It looked brand new. _But how?_

I lifted it, felt its weight, smelled the fresh green scent of new flowers. The hanging was going to be a gift for Hattie. _My best friend._ I'd made it myself, in honor of Hattie's opening night, October 31, 1994.

_1994?_ That was before I was even born! I pushed. I struggled. I scrambled to make sense of things, but in the end I wasn't strong enough. When I looked down again I realized that the hands holding the wall hanging _weren't mine. _They belonged to someone older than I was. Not _old_, but a grown woman.

And I was not Katy Jessevar any longer. I was _her_, this woman with her slender, busy hands, who smelled like roses and wore blue shoes and white stockings. I had mad the wall hanging with the flowers from the Meadow and miniature pumpkins I'd grown myself, in a window box. I drilled holes into the "Hattie's Kitchen" plaque and used wire to hold it in place.

Hattie wouldn't see it, but on the back of the sign I'd drawn the sigils for "Best Efforts" and "Help From Others." I'd wanted to wish her luck, but every witch knew better than to call for something like "Good Fortune." That was a sure way to trip yourself up, because no one really knew what "good" meant. Or "fortune." No, Best Efforts was straightforward. Hattie would always give her best effort. And you never knew when you'd need help. My wish for her was that when the time came, someone with a kind heart would step up to lend a hand. I hoped it would be me.

I put clear nail polish on the pumpkins as a finishing touch, then blew on them. Love breath. As I did, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror on the dresser. It was disturbing. My eyes were as strange as everyone said they were, inside and out, strange eyes that saw farther than I wanted to see.

_I wish, I wish_ . . . but there was no sigil for what I wanted. I wanted a subtraction. _Take away the sight, the gift, the visions, the knowledge. I'll trade them all, gladly, for a life like everyone else's, a normal life spent with no thought of what was coming, no thought of the Darkness, the Darkness and the fire that was in its sou_ . . .

In the mirror the breath that poured out of me caught fire and spun around me like a dragon's.

I shut my eyes tight. _Not real_, I told myself. I'd had these visions before. They didn't mean anything. But behind that rational, clear thought was another, a voice speaking softly from deep inside, from a place that knew more than my mind could ever know. And that voice said, _Not yet. But soon. _

Oh yes, it was coming. My nightmare vision would darken the whole sky and destroy us all. But who would believe me? Why was I the only one who could see it?

_Run! _I thought desperately. I could run away, couldn't I? Leave this place, take the people I loved, move far, far away . . .

No, no, no. Darkness and fire. That was how my world would end, I knew, and nothing I could do would stop that.

The flames exploded around me. I felt my skin blistering, smelled my charring flesh.

I screamed.

* * *

I came to in Peter's arms.

"Katy, Katy!" Hattie was pressing a wet cloth to my face. "What happened child?"

"I don't know," I said. The parchment and the wall hanging were lying on the floor beside me. "I was bringing this thing to you and –" I touched it with the tip of my finger. Instantly I felt the fire around me again. I jerked my hand away. "It was as if I was someone else," I explained, bewildered. "A whole other person."

"Never mind," Hattie said. "Did you hit your head?"

"No, I'm fine, except . . ." I pointed to the wall hanging. "_She _made that. The person I . . . I was. It was for you, I think. She wrote something on the back of the sign."

"Oh?" Hattie chewed on her lip as she untwisted the thin wires. There on the back, just where the woman in my – what? Fantasy? Dream? – had drawn them, were two geometric symbols.

"Best Efforts," I remembered.

"Help From Others," she added, her eyes filling.

"They're sigils."

"Yes."

"But how did I know that? I've never heard that word before. 'Sigil'? What does it even mean?" I heard my voice growing shrill with panic.

"You probably read it somewhere," Peter said. He made it sound as if I was showboating.

"I'm telling the truth!" I shouted.

"Shh." Hattie stroked my hair. "I know you are. What else did you see?"

"Well . . ." I didn't know if I should even mention this part.

"Go on."

"And then the room burned around her," I said quickly. "At least, I – she – imagined it did."

Peter frowned, but said nothing.

"Hey, I don't understand it either," I said defensively.

"The Darkness," Hattie whispered. "Even then she saw it coming."

"That's what she called it," I blurted out, astonished that Hattie would accept what I was saying so easily. "But it wasn't really darkness. It was _fire_. And it was as if she knew . . ."

Peter pushed me onto the floor and moved away from me, a look of suppressed rage on his face.

"Hush up, boy," Hattie spat.

He threw his hands in the air and stomped back to the vegetable table.

I pulled myself up into a sitting position. "Tell me what's going on," I said, too tired to play any more games.

"I should have known," Hattie said. "The first day you worked here. When you touched that man's hand, you could see his whole life."

"I guess."

"That is your gift, Katy."

I shrugged. "It was more like a game, really –"

"No." Her eyes were stern. "It was never a game."

"But I was concentrating then. It doesn't happen all the time."

"It still happened. And now you touched this –" She smoothed her fingers over the wall hanging. "– and you saw the one who fashioned it. You _became_ her."

"But how?" I asked. "And why? Why me? Why _her_?" I rubbed my eyes. "I didn't even know her."

Hattie took my hand a exhaled a long, ragged breath.

"Yes, you did," she whispered. "She was your mother."

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**A/N: Thanks for reading! Be sure to review and vote on my poll. Also check out my other stories.**


	8. Justice

**A/N: Other than the disclaimer and a special thank you to my first reviewer, I don't have anything to say.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Witch & Wizard**

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**CHAPTER 8: JUSTICE**

An ear-piercing shriek broke the tension. It was Eric. His screaming shook the walls. Peter wanted to go to him, but Hattie insisted that he stay in the kitchen with me.

It was embarrassing. I hadn't meant to make a scene, especially not today. And Peter Shaw and his crappy attitude were the last things I wanted to have around while I was trying to figure out what had happened.

I'd somehow gotten into this head of my _mother_. My dead mother, who my dad and his pathetic excuse for a girlfriend, had called criminally insane. And what else? Oh, yes, demonically possessed.

"You're supposed to be making coleslaw," Peter reminded me. I jumped.

I had kind of come to a standstill over the twenty-gallon mixer. The vat was filled with eight heads' worth of sliced, chopped, and marinated cabbage. All I had to add now was mayonnaise, seasoning, lemon juice, and twenty grated carrots. It was some time after carrot number ten that I'd zoned out.

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry."

"Don't know what you're doing here anyway," he grumbled.

"I was invited to work here," I said, full of bravado.

"You were invited because you're an Ainsworth."

I slammed my fist on the counter. "Doesn't anyone around here listen?! My name is –"

"It's Ainsworth," he said quietly. "Whatever you say, whatever you _believe_, you're one of them. What happened today proved that. There's no point in denying it, because everyone knows the truth."

I looked down at the floor. "I think that was just . . . stress . . ."

He threw his hands in the air. "_Stress_? You were reading a dead person's thoughts, Katy."

"Hattie said it was a gift."

"Yeah. An evil gift." He picked up the wall hanging from the counter and threw it into the garbage bin.

"How dare you!" I huffed. "My mother made that!"

"Your mother was a psycho!" he spat.

I lunged at him. He grabbed both my wrists and held me at an arms' length. "Do you want to know what kind of person your mother was? I'll tell you. When my brother was a baby – a _baby _– she picked him up and threw him against a wall."

I felt the air whoosh out of me.

"I was there. I saw it. So did Hattie. And about a hundred other people."

"You're lying!" I screamed.

"Go to the library and look up the news stories," he said. "Afterward she walked away like nothing happened."

My arms suddenly felt too heavy to hold up. Peter dropped them with a look of disgust, as if my skin had dirtied his hands.

"And by the way, your dear old mom was right about the fire coming for her. She set it herself. Burned down your house while she was inside."

He walked back to the cutting table, picked up his knife, and began attacking a bunch of onions as if he wanted to destroy them. Then he gathered up the skins and roots and dumped them in the garbage, on top of my mother's wall hanging.

The cool October air was a shock to my system as I burst out of Hattie's back kitchen door. Between the wisps of coming fog and the tears streaming down my face I could barely see in front of me, but I didn't care. I wasn't ever going back to the restaurant. Or the school, for that matter.

I had to pull my own hair to stop myself from screaming. I coughed for a while, sobbing. And then I started to run. I ran until I could hardly breathe, and after that I walked. If I could have walked off the face of the earth, I would have, but I only made it as far as Old Town.

There was just too much to sort out at once. _My _house? Peter had said that my mother had set fire to my own house. Had I lived there once? Here in Whitfield?

I realized that I'd been circling the library for an hour. There was no point in putting it off. I knew I wouldn't get a moment of peace until I knew if the terrible things Peter had told me were true. But then again, I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

I didn't know where to start looking in the microfilm files, because I had no idea when everything was supposed to have happened. Peter had said that Eric was a baby, so I went ten years back in the local paper. While I was going through the headlines for each issue, I tried to remember my own life. It's funny, how little you remember when there's no one to remind you. My father had never spoken a word about my mother. It occurred to me now that maybe he hadn't just forgotten all about our time with her. Maybe he had made a point of keeping that part of our lives carefully blank.

Who was my mother? I didn't remember. That is, I remembered _having _a mother. I remembered _missing_ my mother, crying over her every night until I had no more tears left. I imagined her constantly, as an angel, or as a movie star, or a pixie on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. But I really had no inkling of what she looked like until I found the photograph that Dad had thrown away. And even though I'd only been a little kid when she died, I'd always felt ashamed that I didn't remember her.

For me, she was just a space, a hole in my heart that was never filled, and probably never would be.

After a half hour I found the first story. "Local Woman Attacks Infant, Sets Fire." A bizarre headline. And on the following day, an even stranger one: "Wonderland Scene of Attempted Baby Slaying." Apparently, the "crazed woman who may have been under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs" had tried to kill Eric Shaw in the Home Improvements section of the biggest discount department store in Whitfield. And the third: "Witchcraft May Figure in Ainsworth Infanticide."

By the fourth day permutations of the story were appearing not only in the local press, but also in the Boston and New York papers. By week's end, _Time_, _Newsweek_, and every other national magazine were running pictures of Whitfield ("A New Salem?"); the house on Summer Street that my mother had burned down with herself in it; the desecrated interior of the Wonderland store where the incident had taken place (an amateur photo for which the publication had paid an enormous price showed a stack of two-by-fours stained with Eric's blood); a police mug shot of Hattie Scott, who had been arrested as a possible co-conspirator, but later released; and my mother. There were so many pictures of her: yearbook photos from high school, snapshots from picnics and Christmases and meetings in rooms with flags in the corners. _Where had they all come from? _I wondered. There were no other people in the pictures. Some of the photographs looked as if other figures had once been included, but had been removed. No one had wanted to be associated with her, I guess.

Then came the secondary stories, many of them clearly public relations pieces about how the Wonderland Corporation had generously assumed all of Eric's medical expenses, even though Wonderland and its subsidiaries were in no way involved with the tragedy.

"Our customers are like family," announced someone who I imagined was Madam Mim's mentor, "and Wonderland takes care of family." I wondered how long it had taken their Executive Committee to come up with that spontaneous outpouring of concern. Wonderland had gone to great lengths to eradicate the psychological mark left by those bloodstains on its lumber. It had built a one hundred-thirty million dollar children's neurology center named "Planet Wonderland" alongside Whitfield Memorial Hospital. It was a state-of-the-art medical facility that looked like a theme park decorated in cartoon colors, with play areas on every floor and a toddler-size train in the lobby. Now, ten years after the incident that prompted this corporate altruism, the company was taking the last step in distancing itself from the horror by replacing the current building with another, bigger, brighter Wonderland Megastore on the other side of Whitfield.

The other news sidebar – fortunately, one that didn't amount to much in the press – was about my mother's alleged association with the occult. ("Is Witchcraft Making A Comeback?") None of these stories had any facts in them, and probably wouldn't have even been conceived if Whitfield hadn't been in the heart of the Witch Hunt country back in colonial times. The only "evidence" that my mother had been a witch was the word of some New Age store merchant who'd once sold her something called a "scrying mirror."

And yet, in my vision – or whatever that experience I'd had was – she had called herself a witch. She had inscribed magic symbols on the wall hanging, and had witnessed her own future death by fire.

Had my father known? That was the part that sent ice water shooting through my veins. All of the stories included the fact that Agatha Ainsworth had had a husband and a six-year-old daughter. The daughter's name was never mentioned, but the husband's was.

It was Harold Ainsworth.

My eyes were burning and my head felt as if it were going to explode. I left the microfilm room, logged onto one of the library's computers, and sent an email to my father, asking a single question:

_When did you change your name?_

I didn't expect him to answer me, because that was how Dad handled every situation he didn't like. He pretended it didn't exist. But I knew it was true. It explained why everyone thought my name was Ainsworth. Because it _was_. Or had been.

And then, after my mother had gone insane and tried to kill . . . Eric . . .

_Oh, God_, I thought, trying to keep my heart from bursting out of my chest. Peter was right. My mother was a psychopath.

And my father, who had changed his name to hers, following an age-old tradition, had changed it again – from Harold to Harrison, from Ainsworth to Jessevar, which is probably what it had been originally – to protect me. He had kept me ignorant all these years because he knew that the truth would have been too hard for an innocent girl to take.

I was the offspring of a monster.

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**A/N: Just a note, the next chapter may take some time to update. It's quite long and I have it in a notebook so I need to type it. With everything else that I have going on in my life, there might be a wait. I will get it up as soon as possible though. Thanks for reading and don't forget to review, favorite, follow, check out my other stories, and vote on my poll! :)**


	9. Samhain Eve

**A/N: I am so sorry for not updating like I said I would. I was stuck in the hospital for days and found out that I had to get surgery later on. I am doing fabulous now though and finally got around to uploading this chapter. Please enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Witch & Wizard, plain and simple.**

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**CHAPTER 9: SAMHAIN EVE**

Outside, it was already getting dark. I was nauseated. Maybe if I sat on the library steps for a while I might get to feeling well enough to . . . What? Set myself on fire?

I buried my face in my hands. It was true, it was all true. That was why no one at school wanted to be my friend. That was why Peter was so disgusted when I'd picked up on my mother's thoughts. And why he wanted me to stay away from Eric. There was no place for me to go anymore. No place at all.

"Get up, Katy. We have to go to Hattie's." I looked up in surprise.

It was Peter. "You left over four hours ago," he said, consulting his watch.

I tried to dry my eyes on my sleeve, but I just couldn't stop crying. After a few minutes, I stopped making the effort.

"That's okay," he said after a while, and sat down beside me. "Here" He handed me a handkerchief. A real handkerchief, not a tissue or a paper napkin from the dining room. I hesitated for a moment, and he offered it to me again. "You can blow your nose in it," he said.

I took it from him. I guess it was clear that I wasn't going to start and conversations. There was nothing more to say. I just wanted him to leave.

He cleared his throat. "Hattie sent me to find you," he said.

_Well you found me, Sherlock, _I thought. _So you can buzz off now._

"It's the busiest night of the year, and Eric's sick. There's a lot to do."

I tried to move away from him, but I was already pressed against the railing as it was.

"I'm sorry," she said, so quietly that I could hardly hear him, even though he was only six inches away. "About today." He looked at the darkening sky, then down at his feet again. "Look, I understand if you don't want to come back to the restaurant. We'll get by. But I was wrong to tell you those things."

I blew my nose into his handkerchief. "They were true."

"The truth can mean different things to different people," he said.

I stood up. "Whatever," I rasped and walked away.

I'd gone twelve blocks before realize that I was heading toward Hattie's, but I kept going. However I felt about Peter, or myself, he'd been right about it being the busiest night of the year. There were going to be a zillion people there vying for sixteen tables, Eric was sick, and I'd left a lot of things undone. I owed it to Hattie to go back, if only for this one shift.

The fog was up in the Meadow. It must have come all at once, while I was in town. Walking into it was like falling into a cloud, dense and moist and so thick that I couldn't see anything at all, and the only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. About halfway to Hattie's, judging from how far I'd walked, I encountered – of all people – Mr. Haversall, the old man who ate lunch everyday with his dog. He was wearing a neon pink shirt. The dog wore an illuminated collar.

"Hey there!" he called to me, waving broadly. "Are ye lost in this pea soup?"

"Hi, Mr. Haversall," I said, hoping I didn't look too teary. "Hi Dingo."

"Ah, it's one of our own," he said, tipping his cap. "Couldn't see you at first."

"Well, I can sure see you." I gave Dingo a scratch behind his ears.

The old man chuckled. "Ayuh, these here're my docent clothes."

"Docent?" I asked.

"A guide," he said.

"Oh. You're directing people to the party."

He laughed so hard his knee twitched. "No, you goose of a girl! Them as wants to go to the party just has to follow their feet." He raised his eyebrows and spoke in a whisper. "I'm directing them _out_ of the meadow. You know . . ." His rheumy eyes scanned the horizon suspiciously from left to right. ". . . the cowen."

"Cows?" I asked.

He screeched with laughter. "Off with you, Miss Ainsworth! Cows, indeed!" Dingo jumped up and down, barking joyfully. "Tell Miss Hattie to save us a seat."

"Okay," I said doubtfully, although he had already disappeared in the fog. For a while I heard Dingo barking in the distance, but before long, that too fell into silence.

"Follow your feet," I muttered. "What's that supposed to mean? For all I know, I could be walking in a gigantic . . ."

And suddenly there it was. Light, laughter, and music, and people everywhere.

"Gracious girl," Hattie said, grabbing my arm and hauling me into the kitchen. "We need fifteen salads in the next half hour. Start with the crab."

I nodded. "Uh, is Peter –"

"Yes, yes. He beat you by five minutes, and I have a piece of my mind to give to both of you," she said, handing me a wooden spoon. "But right now, we all have to get to work."

Somehow we got all the food made. Hattie gave me a black bistro apron to serve in. I guess Peter got one too. I couldn't look at him.

There must have been ten dishes, all different, all for specific guests, on the tray that Hattie had helped me hoist onto my shoulder. "Go clockwise, starting with the table in front of the band," she said.

"What band?" I asked.

"Just go." She pushed me through the swinging doors.

When I saw the place, it took all of my self-control not to drop the tray. Hattie's postage stamp-sized dining room had somehow turned into a vast reception hall with nearly a hundred tables illuminated by tall candles and occasional fountains glowing with unearthly light. The view from the windows was of the Meadow, where deer grazed beneath a full moon. Beyond it was the fog, rising like a luminous blue-white hedge.

"How did you do it?" I asked when I came back into the kitchen.

"Glamour," Hattie said, immediately starting to fill the tray with new dishes.

"But the place is actually bigger," I went on doggedly. "It's not just an illusion."

"Everything is an illusion, m'dear," Hattie said. "Good and bad, right and wrong. Life itself. And death. Illusion, all of it."

I swallowed.

"Then again, the dining room would have to be bigger, wouldn't it?" She shrugged as she shook the water out of a bunch of leaf lettuce. "How else would it fit all those people?"

I didn't know how to respond to that. It was the sort of logic that only people like Miss P. could follow. "Er . . . right," I said. I forced myself to think about nothing except which table was getting which dishes. Anything deeper than that would be dangerous, I knew. _Concentrate on the food. Just concentrate on the food_, I told myself.

Just then, Peter swooshed through the doors. The band's version of "Witch Queen of New Orleans" momentarily swelled. Peter and I avoided each other's eyes as the three of us filled our trays with both hands.

"All the twenty-seven families are here," Hattie said. "Some of them came thousands of miles for this party."

Peter laughed. "Some people will do anything for a free drink."

"Who are the –" I started to ask, but the walls were shaking. Eric was kicking. Even through the din of the music, the kitchen, and the guests' conversation, we could hear him crying.

"Gracious," Hattie said, exasperated. "I was hoping he would stay asleep. I'll have to bring him down here now. Mercy!" She shook her head. "You two go. Hurry, before the food gets cold." She sent us on our way and took off in the other direction, upstairs.

In the dining room, Mr. Haversall waved to me as I passed. He had changed into a tuxedo. Dingo wore a bandana with a skull-and-crossbones motif. There were people of all ages there, from small children to ancient crones towing oxygen tanks. It was like a big wedding, where everybody knows everybody else. There were even some kids from school who were there with their families. They all made a point of joking and talking with Peter. Naturally, none of them spoke to me.

Most the guests were in costume, some of them very elaborate. There were Elizabethans in ruffs and codpieces, Victorians wearing heavy jewelry over their velvet gowns, a number of medieval Guineveres and Merlins, and a few that were pure fantasy. Verity Lloyd was made up to look like Pippi Longstocking. That wasn't much of a stretch. Cheswick was tricked out in a velvet smoking jacket. I think he was trying for Edward Cullen, although with Cheswick's finger-in-a-light-socket hair, I don't think he quite pulled it off.

When I got back to the kitchen, Hattie was carrying Eric in her arms.

"Kaaaay . . ." he rubbed his eyes and looked as if he were about to burst into tears again.

"Hey guy," I said, going over to him.

"Don't," Hattie said.

It seemed that Hattie had finally come around to Peter's thinking. "Fine," I said and went back to loading my tray. We all understood why I couldn't be trusted with Eric, but he didn't, and started wailing.

"Take him into the dining room," Hattie told Peter. "The noise will distract him."

Peter looked nervous. "Are you sure?" he asked. He glanced over at me. "I mean, he's sick."

"It'll be all right. He's coming out of it," Hattie said. "He'll sleep."

While Peter was gone, Hattie and I filled his tray. Her hands worked with tremendous speed and ease, arranging each dish so that it looked as good as it tasted, all the while chatting or singing along with the band's music.

"So this is a family party?" I asked, remembering what she'd said earlier. There was no pint in being sullen, and small talk didn't hurt anyone.

"That's right. Everyone in the dining room is a descendant of one of the twenty-seven families who originally settled here," she said while arranging a platter of _brie en croute _with fresh figs. "They were . . . special people. Most of those descendants still live in Old Town."

"Special?"

"Like your mother. Like me."

My skin prickled as if a cold wind had suddenly blown through the room.

"Like you, Katy," she added.

I swallowed. I think Hattie knew that there were a thousand questions I wanted to ask, because she held a finger to my lips.

"Plenty of time for that," she said. "Anyway, those people" – she nodded toward the doors leading to the dining room – "are the only ones who can get into the Meadow in the fog, when it comes. Everyone else is cowen."

"That's the word Mr. Haversall used. He said he was guiding them out of the Meadow."

"That's one of his jobs."

"But why aren't they welcome? The . . . the cowen?"

"What?" Hattie looked irritated. "What a question. Cowen can't stay because they're . . ." she exhaled, searching for the correct word.

"Not special?" I offered.

She smiled. "Just so."

"But what about the school lunch? Wasn't everyone invited?" I asked.

"We make an exception on that day," she said. "That was why Mr. Haversall wasn't working then."

"So he's . . . special too."

Hattie nodded. "The Haversalls are among the twenty-seven families," she said.

Peter burst through the doors. "Where's my tray?"

"Right here," Hattie said, and shooed us out.

Amazingly, the whole dinner went smoothly, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. The dance floor was packed and the bar was swarming with middle-aged revelers. By nine o'clock, everyone was finished eating. Peter was clearing coffee cups and dessert plates off the tables while I walked around with a pitcher refilling water glasses. Some children were already asleep, including Eric, who sprawled over his high chair like an amoeba.

He was really too big for that chair, and he'd been fidgeting in it so long that his pantleg was all twisted around his knee and his sneaker was dangling off his big toe. Also, I don't want to be disgusting here, but I was pretty sure he'd wet his diaper too. I couldn't do anything about that part, but I thought he'd be more comfortable if I at least rearranged him in the chair.

Big mistake. As soon as I came near him, his foot shot out and slammed me in the stomach. I was carrying the pitcher at the time, so water sloshed all over me. I thought I heard a few people – probably kids from the school – laughing about it, but mostly no one really paid much attention, at least until Eric started screaming and punching the air like he was trying to kill me.

Then Peter appeared from out of nowhere, and shoved me halfway across the room.

"Get away from him!" he bellowed.

Everyone looked. Now the kids were really laughing. I could hear them, because no one else was saying anything. Even the band stopped playing except for the trumpet player, who went on for a few lame bars of "The Lonely Bull" by himself before finally giving up. My only thought was to get back into the kitchen so that I could grab my jacket and get the Hell out of the place. Trying to muster up the last shreds of my dignity, I pushed my dripping, flattened hair out of my eyes and said "excuse me" to the people standing around me, and hoped my rubber legs would remember how to walk.

I don't think they did. There was a thump that knocked the pitcher into my chest with unbelievable force, and then a fireball – yes, a _fireball_, that's the only way to describe it – seemed to emanate from the pitcher into the wall right beside Eric's head, where it exploded in flames.

"Fire!" someone shouted, and the whole place burst into pandemonium, with people screaming and crawling over one another to get to the exits as the flames spread with astonishing speed over the wall.

I knew that it was too late for water, even if I'd had some in my pitcher. The only way this thing was going to be quelled was by suffocating it. As soon as that idea came into my head, I pictured a blanket of blue gelatin moving toward the fire, covering it, wetting it down. Then, once I had the picture, I pushed.

Somewhere in a corner of my mind I could see Peter pulling Eric out of the high chair, but is was as if he were in a movie that I was watching. I was completely with the blanket, smoothing it over the flames, hearing them sputter and sizzle as they succumbed in a haze of smoke.

It was all over in a minute. The guests who a few moments ago were crazed with panic now just looked sheepish and drained the cocktail glasses they'd hung onto during the melee. A lot of them didn't seem to notice that anything had gone on at all. Hattie ran into the room and lifted Eric, who was licking and screaming like a madman, out of his brother's arms.

"What happened here?!" she demanded.

Peter nodded toward the charred half-moon on the wall.

"She started it," a girl my age volunteered, pointing at me.

"Go back to where you belong!" Hattie snapped.

The girl made a face and, with a flounce of her red hair, stomped off. Hattie just shook her head impatiently and hauled Eric away.

That left Peter and me standing alone and facing each other. I wanted to tell him that I hadn't started the fire, but I doubted that he would believe me.

More than anything I just wanted to go back to my dorm, although I knew that wouldn't be for some time yet. The place was a wreck after the stampede that had broken out after the fire. There was food all over the floor, lots of broken plates and glasses, and pools of spilled liquid.

"I'll go . . ." My voice came out sounding like Gollum's in _Lord of the Rings_. I cleared my throat. ". . . find a mop," I finished in a whisper.

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**A/N: As you can see, this chapter is definitely the longest yet. I hope that it made up for the delay. I have decided to alternate updates between this story and my other one, Sugar Plum Princess. I just updated this one, so I will update the other one next, then be back to this one and so on. This way there will be a somewhat familiar pattern and you will know when to expect updates. I apologize for not doing this in the beginning, but it will get better. Finally please go check out my other stories and vote on my poll. Thanks for reading! :)**


	10. Magus

**A/N: I think this new system I came up with is going to work out great! I'm amazed that I can update so quickly. I hope it is the same for my other story. Enjoy chapter 10!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series or Witch & Wizard. Those go to J. K. Rolling and James Patterson.**

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**CHAPTER 10: MAGUS**

At school on Monday some of the kids in Peter Shaw's inner circle tried to block my way at the top of the stairs.

"Where're you going, Katy?" The girl who'd accused me at the party stepped forward. I recognized her wavy red hair. Her name was Becca, I think. She'd never spoken to me before. The others – I guess there around ten of them – slowly gathered around me so that I was surrounded on three sides, with the stair behind me. I tried to maneuver past them, but the whole group shifted whenever I moved.

"Maybe you don't know how we feel here about people who attack little kids," Becca said.

"While they're sleeping," someone added.

"Or setting fires in a crowded place."

"All our families were there," another voice put in. It was Verity. She looked pained. "You could have killed them all."

"No," I said. "It wasn't –"

"You were the only one there without parents."

I looked around. They were closing in on me. The only way out, it seemed, was down the marble stairway. I back down one step. Two.

"Did you come here to finish what your mother started?" an earnest-looking boy asked.

"Why couldn't you just leave us alone?"

"What did Eric Shaw ever do to you?"

"Or to your mom?"

"Did you think changing your name would fool anyone?"

"Snake eyes."

Three steps. They moved closer. I shuffled backward, teetering. My books tumbled out of my arms, scattering papers all over the stairs below. I was going to fall, I knew. My arms windmilled. The last thing I saw before I lost my balance was Becca's mouth spread like a toad's into an expression of malicious satisfaction.

Just when I was sure I was going to end up smeared across those white marble stairs, someone ran up behind me and broke my fall.

Peter.

I don't know how he managed to keep his balance with crashing into him. All I knew was that instead of being dead, I was now lying across his arms, so close to him that I could feel the beating of his heart.

He was looking up at the crowd, his gray eyes incandescent with fury. "Why are you doing this?" he shouted, his voice cracking. "She didn't start that fire, you morons, she put it out!"

My head snapped around. He _knew_?

"And she saved my brother, while the rest of you were running around like a bunch of scared chickens!"

The expressions on the faces of my would-be attackers were more bewildered than menacing now.

"Are you all right?" he asked softly, leaning over me.

I nodded as he set me down and helped me pick up my books and papers. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely move my fingers.

"I'll walk you to class," Peter said. Then, to make a point, he put his arm around me and led me through the phalanx of bodies at the top of the stairs.

The late bell rang, and Becca and the others dispersed. As we approached my classroom Peter and I were alone in the hall. His arm was still around me, even though there was no one to protect me from.

"I guess I owe you big time," I said.

"It's the other way around. I saw what you did Saturday. I should have thanked you then, but I was . . ."

"That's okay," I said.

"And . . . I'm sorry I shoved you. It wasn't what you think. That is . . ." His hands fidgeted uncomfortably. "You didn't do anything wrong. With Eric. I know you like him."

I nodded.

"And the other thing, at the library. I meant that."

I held up my hand. "You didn't have to apologize. I told you, it was the truth."

"And I told _you_ –"

"That truth can mean different things to different people."

There was a hint of a smile in his eyes. "You remembered that?"

I felt myself blushing. "I didn't understand what you were talking about then," I admitted. "But I guess it's like how you and Becca both saw what happened Saturday at the party, only you ended up with two different versions of what I did. She thought I started the fire, you thought I stopped it."

"I'm right, she's wrong," he said.

This time it was my turn to laugh. "How do you know?"

"Because you couldn't have created that fireball." There was no humor in his eyes now. "Whoever did that had more chops than you could have come up with."

It took me a minute to absorb what he was saying. "You mean you think that someone shot that thing at Eric _deliberately_?"

He shrugged. "There was a lot of energy in the room. Those people . . ."

"The twenty-seven families."

"Yes. Well, they're . . ."

"Special, I know. Hattie's word," I said.

"Right. Special." He chewed his lip and stared at me through narrowed eyes, as if he didn't know how much he wanted to tell me. "I'm just saying that you might not want to look too closely at them. At us."

"You? I thought I was the freak here."

"No, you fit right in. The Ainsworths are one of the twenty-seven families, but you didn't grow up here, so you don't really know what's going on. You don't know what can happen to you."

"What's that?" I asked. "What can happen?"

He turned his head away. I could see him wrestling with himself over something. Then he looked at me with his soft gray eyes that seemed to pull me into the center of his soul. "Nothing," he said quietly. "I won't let it."

I felt my stomach flip.

"Will you sit with me at lunch today?" Peter asked.

I think my mouth fell open. I prayed it didn't, but I think it did. His arm was still around me. I could smell his aftershave . . .

"Yoo-hoo there!" Miss P. was heading purposefully down the hall toward us, her shoes clacking. "Miss Jessevar!"

I sighed. I figured she was going to yell at us for being in the hall after the late bell. "We – "

"Please go to the visitors' lounge at once," she said. "I'll notify your instructor that you'll be late for class." She cocked her head quizzically at Peter. "Why are you here after the bell, Mr. Shaw?" she asked, but didn't wait for an answer. "Never mind. Just get to wherever you're going. Good day." She clacked away.

Then Peter took my hand. "I'll look for you in the dining room," he said, giving my palm a little squeeze.

My feet felt as if they were dancing as I made my way to the visitors' lounge. In fact, I was so preoccupied with thoughts of Peter (he _squeezed my hand_!) that I didn't realize until I was almost at the door how odd it was that I should have a visitor at all. "Dad?" I asked tentatively at the entrance.

Wrong. Instead there were two women who looked as if they represented the Temperance League.

One was very old, probably close to eighty, and appeared to be dressed in her Halloween party clothes, all lace and black velvet, with high-button boots and a doily-like object that hung across her head like crocheted dog ears.

But it was the other one who held my attention. She was in her thirties, I guessed, and though pretty, not very remarkable except for one thing:

She looked exactly like my mother.

The resemblance to the woman I only knew from a photograph was so startling that I felt my breath involuntarily whooshing into my lungs. "Mom?" I whispered.

"Hello, Serenity," the older woman said kindly. "I am Elizabeth Ainsworth, your great-grandmother. And this is your Aunt Agnes."

The younger woman stepped forward, offering her hand. "Your mother Agatha was my twin sister," she said.

She smiled at me with bright green eyes that were gentle and loving and beautiful. Not a monster's eyes, but an angel's. My mother's eyes. My own.

"We've come to tell you about your family," she said.

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**A/N: Please review! I don't have very many for the story yet and I really like them. Also favorite, follow, add to a community, vote on my poll, and check out my other stories. Thanks for reading and I will update very soon!**


	11. Familia

**A/N: I am so sorry for the wait. My computer didn't work at all for four days so I couldn't upload. For those of you who are also reading Sugar Plum Princess it will be updated very soon. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or Witch & Wizard.**

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**CHAPTER 11: FAMILIA**

Agnes and Elizabeth Ainsworth, my aunt and great-grandmother, lived together in a rambling old house in Old Town, not too far from the school.

The doors were open, and workmen were going in and out carrying lumber for wainscoting.

"Watch your step, Dear," Mrs. Ainsworth cautioned.

The men all tipped their hats in unison. As soon as they saw me, though, all their tools and wood clattered to the ground.

"Carry on, Jonathan," she ordered, unperturbed. "She's one of us."

"Yes, ma'am." He nodded to me, but his eyes slid immediately toward Agnes as we approached.

She blushed. "Jonathan," she whispered, lowering her eyes.

"Miss Agnes," he whispered in return, looking down as well.

Inside, the rooms seemed to spread out in all directions from a central hallway. Our destination was a parlor with wooden shutters over the windows and a stone fireplace above which hung a large glass-framed piece of needlepoint.

"That was fashioned by a distant ancestor," Mrs. Ainsworth said. "She was very clever with knots. Shortbread?" She held out a plate of cookies while Agnes made tea in the kitchen.

I accepted one, but I couldn't take my eyes away from the needlepoint. It was obviously very old, with _S_s that looked like _F_s, but in perfect condition. There were three lines of text, nonsensical to me, interwoven with flowers and vines.

_**In the alban field, the circling mists twist low**_

_**Kith and kin draw the Botte on crafted bow.**_

_**Arise, great arrow–swift as a sparrow, sprung from below.**_

"What does that mean?" I asked.

The old woman glanced over her shoulder at it. "It's a spell," she said. "A community spell. Nine families of the twenty-seven have been given these three lines to memorize through eternity. Nine others remember another three, and so on. There are nine lines in all. When all the lines are spoken, the spell is cast."

I swallowed. "Spell?" I croaked.

So she was one of them too. A "special" person.

We stared at one another blankly for a moment. Then Mrs. Ainsworth coughed and fluttered a handkerchief in her hands. "Good gracious, you're not cowen, are you?"

"Of course she isn't," Agnes said, hurrying in with a tray of tea things. "Hattie was quite certain. Nevertheless, Katy is new here. There are many things she doesn't understand." She poured a cup of tea and handed it to me. "Please don't be alarmed if we seem . . . odd to you. We are an ancient family. Some of our ways may seem quaint."

I nodded. "I'm happy to see you," I said, relying on form so that I wouldn't have to try explaining the jumble of thoughts swirling inside my head. "Until today, I never knew I had any relatives. Any family at all, except for my dad."

Mrs. Ainsworth sniffed. "Your father did not understand our ways," she said. "It is always a mistake for one of our kind to marry cowen."

"Our kind?" I asked.

"Witches," she said.

"Oh." I looked to Agnes. She'd said it. Actually used the word. "Grandmother, please," Agnes hushed. "That is not a term we should use."

"Not with cowen," Mrs. Ainsworth clarified. "But Serenity surely –"

"She goes by Katy," Agnes said crisply. "And that in itself should tell us that she is not ready to hear –"

Mrs. Ainsworth looked pained. "You were so dear to us." Her teacup rattled in its saucer. "And we've missed you . . . so much . . ." She had to set the cup down and cover her face. This was my great-grandmother, I realized. Batty or not, she was my blood, my legacy. I moved to sit beside her and she threw her arms around me with a little cry and the soft scent of powder.

"Oh, my precious child," she whispered, her eyes filled with tears. "Do you really not remember us at all?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I really don't remember ever being here before."

She took my hand. "Darling Katy," she said. "How difficult it ust have been for you all these years."

"Perhaps it was better, under the circumstances," Agnes said. "Her father was cowen. She may not have manifested at all. She looked at me curiously. "Or did you?"

"Did . . . did I what?" I stammered.

"Display some unusual ability before you came to Whitfield. Something that you may have felt wasn't quite . . . well, normal."

I inhaled sharply. I'd never told anyone about the pushing before, not even my father. "Well, sometimes I think I can make things move. Actually, I don't know if I can or not. It's probably just my imagination."

The two women exchanged a glance between them.

"We heard about the party," Agnes said. "And the fire."

"I didn't set the fire," I said stolidly.

"No, of course not."

"I put it out. I pushed. Made something move. Only this time it wasn't a real object. I used a blanket. But the blanket was only in my mind." I shook my head. "I'll bet that sound completely crazy."

"Not to us, Dear," Mrs. Ainsworth said with a smile.

Agnes looked stern. "We don't care for that term either."

"Oh, stop it Agnes!" The old woman waved her handkerchief agitatedly. "One mustn't say 'witches'. One mustn't say 'crazy'. For heaven's sake, why can't you just let people say what they mean!"

Agnes was silent for a long moment. Finally she said, "Of course, Grandmother. You're right. The name-calling hasn't done us in yet."

"And it won't, as long as we don't let it," Mrs. Ainsworth said stubbornly.

"Is it because of my mother?" I asked. "The name-calling, I mean."

"Only the crazy part," Mrs. Ainsworth said, shifting in her seat. "People have been calling us witches for centuries." She raised her eyebrows. "Ourselves included."

A little puff of air escaped my lips. _Witches_.

Agnes sighed. "All right. I just wanted to avoid shocking Katy." She turned toward me. "You see, among the uninitiated –"

"She means 'ignorant,'" Mrs. Ainsworth interrupted.

". . . the term 'witch' is sometimes misunderstood. Ordinary people – cowen – often believe that witches are evil, or even go as far as worshipping the devil. We don't really know how or why this misunderstanding came into being, except –"

"Oh pooh. Of course we know. Men aren't comfortable with women having power, and the kind of power witches have tends to be inherited through women. Some men can do magic, of course, but far more women. It's in our nature. Even cowen women know when their babies are in distress."

"Nevertheless, in their world, that sort of ability isn't honored. To cowen, power means money, influence, and physical strength. Getting others to do what they want." Agnes sat up straighter. "But our world is different. Our first ancestors were humans with extraordinary abilities: Magicians, shamans, witch doctors, medicine women. Also clairvoyants, psychometrists, teleporters . . . psychics of one stripe or another."

"What's a psychometrist?" I asked.

"Someone who can see into another's life by touching an object belonging to that person."

I sucked in my breath. That was what I'd done at the restaurant, with my mother's wall hanging.

"We know, Dear," Mrs. Ainsworth said kindly. "Hattie told us. These episodes will probably occur more and more often. That is why we came to you, despite . . ." Her voice trailed away.

"Your father forbade us to contact you," Agnes said. "He made that very clear when he left Whitfield with you. We are going against his express wishes by speaking with you now. Knowing that, you may leave now or at any time, and we of course will never bother you again."

"But we wanted you to know that you're not alone," Mrs. Ainsworth said, stroking my hair.

"I don't want to leave," I said. "Yet," I added cautiously.

Agnes' lips curved into a slight smile. "At any rate, cowen believe that these special abilities – the sort of thing that you've begun to exhibit – are not gifts, but merely aberrations of normal behavior. Many of them don't believe these abilities even exist at all. Everything to them is a trick, an illusion, a lie."

"Or crazy," Mrs. Ainsworth added.

Agnes didn't say anything to that. The two of them just sat for a moment, absorbed in their own thoughts and, it seemed to me, inexpressibly sad.

"Was she?" I asked. Both women looked at me, their heads turning in unison. "My mother. Was she crazy?"

Neither spoke for a moment. Finally Mrs. Ainsworth said, "We don't know Dear." Her voice cracked. "She was the most gifted witch in Whitfield. Perhaps too gifted. Her abilities may have been too great for her mind to bear. We know it was very hard for her to see some of the things she saw."

"The Darkness," I said. "That's what she called it, 'The Darkness, with fire at its soul.'"

The old woman's face sagged. "We call it The Darkness because we cannot see it. All we see are the results of its power, the evil it spreads." She dabbed at her eyes. "It was, however, well known to your mother. She had been in its presence at a young age."

She took a long, ragged breath. "You tell her, Agnes."

My aunt templed her fingers, thinking carefully before she spoke. "Your mother possessed a most rare and peculiar talent. She was what we call an oracle, one who can see the future. Like with all great gifts, it was both a blessing and a curse.

"But to tell you about my sister, I must first tell you about our parents. They were intense, passionate people, a very political couple during very political times. When Agatha and I were fourteen, they visited a remote community of expatriates in Africa. It was supposed to be some kind of people's paradise, where everyone shared things equally, and there wouldn't be any kind of government interference. No taxes, no wars."

"Unfortunately, that didn't turn out to be the case," Mrs. Ainsworth said. "Thank God you had the flu, Agnes."

My mother's twin cleared her throat. "Yes, it was just the three of them, our parents and Agatha. The day after they arrived, gunfire broke out in the compound. Almost everyone was killed."

"My . . . grandparents?" I asked hoarsely.

Agnes nodded. Mrs. Ainsworth covered her eyes with her handkerchief. Her wrinkled hand was trembling like a leaf in the wind. I put my arm around her. "Agatha made it back home, though," she said. "She was never the same, but she came back."

"For the rest of her life, Agatha was obsessed with the Darkness."

"And so, Katy," Mrs. Ainsworth said gently, "we can't really say with any certainty that your mother wasn't . . . mentally incapacitated by this event." She wrung the handkerchief in her hands. "I think it may have been why she married a cowen. To get away from her visions."

"As if she could."

"Then again, the Ainsworth women always marry for love." The old woman smiled. "Whatever demons she battled, Dear, your mother did love your father. Very much."

_**If only he could have loved her back**_, I thought.

"I believe she planned to move away from Whitfield and raise you as cowen," Agnes said. "Your father was already in the process of changing his name back to what it had been when . . . when the incident happened with the Shaw baby."

"Why did she do it?" Mrs. Ainsworth whispered. Clearly, she had asked herself the same agonizing question for the past ten years. "How could she even think of doing such a thing?"

Agnes shook her head.

"Your father blamed us," Mrs. Ainsworth said. "He said we'd fostered Agatha's insanity. He'd never believed in witches, you see, and Agatha may have hidden her talents from him at the beginning."

"So of course when she could no longer hide them, he interpreted her abilities as psychosis."

"We tried to keep in touch with you, but all our letters were returned. Also, there was such a fuss made in the news that we thought perhaps he was right to take you away."

Something occurred to me. "You weren't at the Halloween party," I said.

"No." Agnes looked at her hands. "We keep to ourselves these days."

"But Hattie said that all twenty-seven families were represented. Who was there for the Ainsworth's?"

They both looked at me then. "Why, you, Dear," Mrs. Ainsworth said.

"Oh." I blinked. "Everyone knew from the beginning, then," I said. "Everyone except me."

The old woman chuckled. "Shameful," she said. "Keeping you in the dark like that. Naturally, as soon as you'd matriculated at the school, word spread like wildfire. That's why we've made ourselves known to you. After what happened at the restaurant, Hattie thought that . . . well . . ."

"That I'd need a family?" I suggested.

"We're sorry that it's such a notorious family," Mrs. Ainsworth said. "But at least you know that there are two people who care about you."

"And care very much," Agnes added. And with Peter.

I belonged with them all.

Finally, I belonged.

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**A/N: I couldn't resist, I had to add a lot of fluff in this chapter. Anyway, please review, favorite, follow, check out my other stories, and vote on my poll. Thanks for reading!**


	12. Sorciere

**A/N: Technology cooperated, so here is the next chapter. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: Don't own it, never have.**

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**CHAPTER 12: SORCIERE**

There are all kinds of magic, I've learned. Some is spectacular, and bends your mind just to think about it. But there's other magic, too, quiet magic that maybe you don't even notice at all unless you're looking for it.

Hattie says that magic, like love, has to be believed to be seen. Once I became willing to see I noticed magic everywhere, in the trees and the wind and the sea, in the way everything changes all the time, but is still beautiful.

Whitfield was full to the brim with magic. My job was full of magic too. Hattie kept me on even after the Halloween rush, teaching me how to make all sorts of soups and stews, mulled cider and hot chocolate, plus whatever exotic things she came up with. Once we made a dish called _yang gobchang-gui_ (broiled beef tripe and chitterlings) (!), infused with an antianxiety spell, for two Korean students who wandered in tense and left mellow.

School, on the other hand, wasn't magical at all. It was just common sense not to try reality-bending things in front of the Muffies. But I was doing better there, too. Thanks to Peter, people started opening up to me a little. I rarely had to eat lunch alone anymore. Verity and Cheswick issued a standing invitation for me to run with them on the indoor track after school. I think it was their way of apologizing for wanting to kill me that day.

I visited the relatives a couple of times a week. I even talked them into having dinner at the restaurant a few times. Hattie cooked for them on those occasions, though. I guess they needed more magic than what I could come up with.

I grew to understand exactly why my dad had fallen in love with my mother. If Agatha had been anything like Agnes, he'd only have had to listen to her discourse for five minutes on _Le Morte d'Arthur_, and he'd be hooked.

Mrs. Ainsworth tried to teach me tatting, which is lacemaking, but all of my efforts came out looking like maps of the Yucatan. So we switched to quilting, where I fared a little better, although my only task was to cut out the little squares. Still, I liked it because it gave me a chance to just sit with her. Everything about her was soft and gentle and cloudlike. I realized that, even when I didn't know she existed, I'd missed her.

She told me I could call her Elizabeth, but that just seemed wrong. And "great-grandmother" was really awkward. Finally I came up with "Gram," which I hoped she wouldn't think was too familiar. One day I tried it, tentatively, as I held up a quilting square.

"How's this . . . Gram?" I swallowed.

She smiled. "It's perfect," she whispered, adding "Katy."

Sometimes a name can mean a lot.

Then there was Peter. Peter, with his beautiful chiseled face and eyes like an angry sea. Peter, who'd caught me in his perfectly muscled arms on a marble staircase. Oh, Peter . . .

Actually, Peter hadn't done anything romantic since that day.

What if he was only being nice when he walked me to class, or joked with me at work, or stayed up with me late nights studying? What if he was only being friendly when he took me to his friends' dorm parties?

Maybe he totally wasn't interested in me at all. Maybe he was gay.

The prospect began to gnaw at me. I wished I knew someone who understood these things. I needed a consultant, but I couldn't think of any girls who might be able to help me. Verity Lloyd was, if anything, even less worldly than I was. The Muffy girls would probably know, but I could just imagine what they'd say if I asked them how to get my pseudo-boyfriend to kiss me.

So I did the unthinkable. I went to my relatives.

Aunt Agnes was standing in the entryway, talking with Jonathan and his crew. I was glad my great-grandmother wasn't around. I loved her, But I wouldn't feel right talking about the possible homosexuality of my boyfriend with an eighty-year-old woman who wore a doily on her head.

As I approached, once again all the lumber and tools fell out of the carpenters' hands onto the ground. It occurred to me that these guys must be the clumsiest workmen in New England.

"It's all right," Agnes said quickly. "Katy's a teleporter."

"Oh, is she now?" Jonathan asked, smiling in surprise, although it was not the degree of surprise I might have expected from a workman hearing that information. Then he lowered his hand to his side and spread his fingers. The fallen hammer shot upward through the air into his waiting palm.

"Me too," he said cheerfully.

It took me a moment to recover, but as he and his men all summoned their tools in the same manner, I realized that they hadn't actually dropped anything when they'd seen me coming, because they hadn't actually been holding something in the first place. The materials they'd been working with had been suspended in midair.

"Get me one of those three-inch planks, would you, pretty?" Jonathan asked, gesturing toward a pile of wood.

"Uh, sure," I said, picking one up. They were very thin and light. "Do you want more than one?"

"One'll do. But don't use your hands." He winked at Agnes. "Well, you said she was a witch, didn't you?"

Agnes crossed her arms over her chest. "She doesn't have to prove anything to you, Jonathan."

"Oh, let her." He gave me a smile of encouragement. "Have at it, Katy."

I hesitated. I'd never pushed in front of anyone before. There was the incident at the Halloween party, but the blanket I'd used to put out the fire was imaginary, so no one really saw anything.

Blushing a little, I tried to forget my embarrassment and concentrate on moving the wainscoting. _Up_, I thought, and there it was, easy as pie. Then I pushed it toward Jonathan. It wobbled a little at first, dipping and veering off course once when I looked over at Agnes.

"Hold on to it, Katy," Jonathan whispered. That brought my attention back to the piece of wood. "Right, girl. Put it in this slot here." The wood moved into place with a satisfying _snick_. "There you go," he said, nailing it in. "You'd make a fine carpenter, I'd wager."

I was so pleased with myself that I focused back on the lumber and lifted the whole pile into the air, organizing it into a solid wall before sending it flying over to Jonathan. He laughed out loud and applauded.

"That will do, Katy," Agnes said. "There is no need to show off."

The wood clattered to the floor.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You shouldn't have spoken, Agnes," Jonathan said with quiet authority. He was methodically putting planks back in place against the wall. "The girl's got a gift."

Two red spots appeared on her cheeks "Yes," she said. "More than one. Come along Katy."

Jonathan's hands were full, so he didn't tip his hat, but he acknowledged her leaving with a nod. It was clear to me that they were in love with each other.

I was flushed and thirsty from my unexpected triumph with the wainscoting. Agnes gave me a glass of lemonade and a piece of cheese. "It's important to eat something after doing magic," she said. "Food brings you back."

I knew what she was talking about. While I was pushing, I felt light. Light, and growing lighter by the second. It was almost as if I were disappearing, little by little.

"You are, first and foremost, a human animal," she said. "Not a witch, not a mind, but a physical being. Don't forget that.

"I won't." It seemed to be the perfect introduction to what I wanted to talk about, so I jumped right in. "Actually, that's why I'm here," I said, trying to hide my extreme discomfort. "Because I'm an animal. Er . . ."

She cocked her head.

"That is . . ."

She looked at me as if I were speaking Chinese. I supposed it hadn't been a very good segue, after all.

"Is this about a boy?" she inquired.

Was I so obvious? "No," I lied. "Of course not."

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Who is he?"

"Peter Shaw." So much for my expertise as a dissembler. "Do you think he's gay?"

"Excuse me?"

I considered running, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. One word from Agnes, and Jonathan would trip me up with a floating two-by-four. "Never mind," I mumbled.

"Are you considering him as a love partner?" she asked.

I wished I'd never been born. A _love partner_. Old maid aunts actually thought in terms like that. This was all becoming a horrible dream. A nightmare.

"He's cowen," she said finally.

"No, he's not. He was serving at the Halloween party, same as me. Isn't that the litmus test – getting through the fog in the Meadow?"

"He gets in because of Hattie," she said. "Peter is her ward. Once he's of age, I doubt he'll ever find his way back."

"But the Shaws are one of the twenty-seven families."

Agnes stiffened. "Not that they'd ever admit it."

"Does that matter? They're the oldest family in Whitfield."

"Not the oldest," Agnes said archly. "Only the richest."

"Does that matter?" I asked, wondering if there was some kind of reverse ratio between wealth and witchcraft.

"Of course not," Gram said, shuffling excitedly into the room. She must have been listening at the door. "There's no need to be bitter, Agnes."

Agnes sniffed. "The Shaws have been denying their magical heritage for more than three hundred years!" she said.

"Nevertheless, they are still one of the families."

"Only because their name is in the record," Agnes insisted. "They have no magic."

"But of course they do!" Gram exclaimed. "Serenity Ainsworth's own daughter married a Shaw!"

"A Shaw who never changed his name," Agnes muttered.

Gram waved her handkerchief weakly. "Yes. What a pity." She turned to me. "That was Zenobia," she explained. "She was one of the twins, also. Zenobia and Zethinia. Our family often produces twins."

"Zethinia fared better, I daresay," Agnes said.

Gram shook her head. "Alas, the Ainsworth women always marry for love. There has never been a divorce. Ever."

"Why didn't Mr. Shaw change his name?" I asked.

"Because they never held to our ways," Aunt Agnes bristled. "They _want_ to be cowen."

Gram uttered a little cry at that, as if Agnes had uttered a blasphemy. "Tragic," she whispered.

"From all accounts, Zenobia Ainsworth was an exceptionally talented witch," Agnes said. "I imagine she hoped that, by fusing her magical blood into the Shaw line, she and her husband might produce children with at least a portion of her ability."

"It was she who embroidered the piece above the mantle in this house," Gram said. "It is infused with knot magic."

"Unfortunately, the Shaws did not appreciate the treasure that was Zenobia Ainsworth. In the end, the cowen drove her away."

"Horrid people," Gram agreed.

"Some of the Shaws inherited Zenobia's talent with knots. They became clothing designers, fabric manufacturers, and artists who work with string and cloth. Some of them are quite famous today. But none of them live in Whitfield."

"So Peter does have magical blood," I insisted. _And he's my relative_, I thought, if having a mutual ancestor three hundred and fifty years ago counts. I decided it didn't.

Agnes sighed. "Actually, Peter is a special case," she said. "His father, Prescott Shaw, left him and his brother Eric in Hattie's care before his death. The Shaw family was shocked by Prescott's decision. They tried all sorts of ploys to get Peter away from Hattie, but Prescott's will was airtight."

"So they disinherited poor Peter," Gram said. "He has no family except Hattie Scott now. And because he's a male . . ." She shook her head.

"What's wrong with him being male?" I asked.

"Well, the Shaw men have never exhibited much magical talent. They're bankers, lawyers, financiers, that sort of thing."

"Also big game hunters, soldiers, aviators, and, allegedly, clandestine arms dealers."

"Grandmother, we don't know that."

"Uber-cowen," I ventured. Gram nodded.

"So the possibility of Peter's being magical is very remote," Agnes continued, ignoring us. "Although not impossible. He may develop some skills in the next year or so. Hattie's been tutoring him, and she's the best there is.

"The strongest witch in Whitfield," Gram said proudly.

"And can she give him magic?" I asked.

"Goodness no. No one becomes a witch just because they want to. Some of us, like you, child, are born witches, with talents and abilities that manifest early. Others, with lesser gifts, learn to develop them through teaching and encouragement. But a person with no magical ability is destined to be cowen, even if he comes from one of the twenty-seven families."

"So what happens then? To Peter?"

"I'm sure Hattie will succeed," my great-grandmother said encouragingly.

"But what if she doesn't?"

Agnes looked uncomfortable. She cleared her throat. "In that case, Peter will have to accept the life of the cowen."

I blinked. "You mean he'll be sent away?"

"Cowen cannot be a part of our lives," Agnes said, gently but firmly. "We are too different from them. Those differences may not matter so much in youth, but later, they are nearly irreconcilable."

"But my mother did it," I said. "She married a . . . my dad."

The two women gazed at me balefully. "And look what happened," Gram said. "Zenobia also ended up with an unhappy life. Rather than infusing the Shaw line with magic, the opposite happened. The Shaws treated Zenobia like a pariah. She became known as a witch – the worst thing that can happen to us in cowen society. Her husband grew ashamed of her abilities, and left her. In time, her neighbors turned her in to the authorities. She would surely have been harmed, and maybe even burned at the stake, if she hadn't sought shelter in the Meadow."

"The Meadow?"

"The fog," she explained. "It's a sanctuary. Cowen cannot penetrate it. When witches are inside the fog, we are on another plane. We are invisible to outsiders. That is why the fog appears on each of the eight Wiccan holidays. While we celebrate, we cannot be seen by the mass of men."

"Does Peter know all this?" I asked.

"Of course. Hattie would be quite remiss if she did not prepare him for what may happen. What probably will happen."

"He'll be all alone," I said, mostly to myself.

Gram patted my hand and said, "Try to understand, Dear. It wouldn't be good for anyone if you fell in love with Peter Shaw."

"Hattie's seen what's been developing between you, and she's spoken with Peter."

"What?" My hands curled into fists. "I can't believe this!"

"Peter knows he can never have you," she said. "And he's sensible enough not to try." Deliberately, she put her hands over mine and brought them to my sides. "Even if you're not."

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**A/N: Please, please, PLEASE review. I don't mean to sound desperate here, but I'd really like to know what you think. I only have two reviews so far - thank you to those people - but I'd really like more! They keep me writing. I also appreciate favorites and follows too. Don't forget to check out my other stories and vote on my poll. Thanks for reading and I will update soon! :)**


	13. Binding

**A/N: There are no announcements for this chapter.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or Witch & Wizard.**

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**CHAPTER 13: BINDING**

I cried so hard that night that the next day I barely looked human. All day long people asked me if I was sick, so I said I was. I showed up for Existentialism in Fiction wearing sunglasses. Mr. Zeller didn't say anything. Maybe he thought I was just getting into the existentialism zone or something.

Peter didn't sit near me. And he didn't walk me to work afterward. Just like the beginning of school.

When I arrived for work, he was leaning against the counter, studying a notebook. It was the same one I'd found under the table the first time I'd come to Hattie's.

"Hi, Peter," I said, hanging up my coat. He may have agreed not to have anything to do with me, but I hadn't.

"Aren't you ever going to take off those shades?" he asked.

I didn't want him to see how terrible I looked. "Light sensitivity," I said glibly. "Doctor's orders."

"Okay," I doubt if he believed me. "Katy . . ."

"Mmm?" I picked up a rag and pretended to wipe off the spotlessly clean counter.

"I wanted to walk you to work today."

"It's okay," I whispered. Some things are just too complicated to discuss. "Let it be." I reached for the notebook, which he'd laid on the counter. "Whatcha reading?"

He made a move to hide it from me but, realizing I'd already seen it, made do with an embarrassed shrug. "Binding spells," he said. "Hattie's trying to teach me. I'm not very good, though."

"It takes practice," I said. Like I'm the big expert giving advice. I wanted to kick myself.

"_You _don't have to practice," he said.

I don't know any binding spells. I just cook, remember?"

"I think you could do anything."

My heart must have stopped. It was hard for me to carry on any sort of conversation with him while I was looking at him, with his wheat-colored hair falling into his eyes and his lips parting over his perfect white teeth.

I realized that I'd been staring. My neck was getting tired from looking up at him, so I shifted my gaze onto the countertop. It didn't make any difference. He even smelled wonderful.

"Hey," he said softly, touching my chin. I had to look up at him again. It was like falling into a pool of honey. He smiled, an easy, slow grin. "I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable," he said.

"No, I . . ." I had to run a finger along the collar of my sweater. "I just . . ."

I cleared my throat. Four or five times. I didn't want to be _good_. I didn't want to have powers if that meant I couldn't be with him. "Um, why do you want to learn binding spells?" I asked, trying to talk about something besides my alleged talent at witchcraft.

He spread his hands, palms up. "Because they're easy. At least that's what Hattie says. Here, let me try one on you."

"Bind away." I held out my arms, wrists overlapping.

"Take these off first." Before I could object, he removed my sunglasses. Terrific, I thought. Red eyes and no makeup. With my green irises and pallid, northeastern skin, I probably looked like the flag of Italy.

Now he was staring at me. "Witch eyes," he whispered, still smiling. I tried to turn away, but with the gentlest of pressure, he stopped me. "Beautiful and strange. One of a kind."

I was trying hard to keep breathing. _Inhale, exhale . . . _

"I can try the spell now," he said.

"The . . ." But my throat had closed in a glottal stop, as if I were speaking some African language. So I just nodded.

He held out my arms, which had taken the consistency of cooked spaghetti, then took a couple of steps backward and made a face.

"Are you all right?" I finally managed. He'd turned red and was panting.

"I'm concentrating," he said.

"Oh. Sorry."

"Do you feel it?"

"Feel what? Oh, the binding. Yes, I think so." But that was only to be polite. Actually, all I felt was my arms getting tired. "Yes, definitely." My eyes were closed. I was trying to will myself to feel bound.

When I opened them, though, Peter was standing in front of me with his lips pursed and his hands on his hips. "You're a terrible liar," he said.

I felt crestfallen for him. "I just wanted it to work," I said.

"Yeah, me too. I wish there was an incantation or something like in books. Just concentrating is . . ."

"Vague, I know."

"You either have it or you don't. And I don't."

"That's not true," I said. "You can develop those abilities. Hattie's a great teacher. She's the strongest witch in Whitfield, and you're practically her son."

He looked at me from under his eyebrows. "You know about me, don't you," he said.

"No! Honestly . . ." But he knew I was lying again. "Okay, yes." I admitted. "Some."

"You know I'm cowen. By next year I'll be thrown out of Old Town."

"I don't know that, and neither do you. What's more, I don't care. I'll never stop . . . being your friend," I said. He had no idea. "No matter what."

"Thanks," he said. "But when the time comes, that won't matter. You'll be in the magic circle, and I won't be." He turned away.

"Peter . . ." Just then Hattie walked in with Eric.

He was all excited to see me, kicking and waving a placemat. "Eric has a new drawing for you," Hattie said.

"Kaaaay," he said, pressing the paper against my face.

"Thanks Eric. Well, let's see what we've got," I said. It was the usual. That is to say, a magnificent rendering of birds in flight. This time they were flying in a spiral pattern. It was uncanny, how he could depict every angle of the birds while still conveying a feeling of motion and speed. "Wonderful," I said, tousling his hair. He shrieked in delight.

"Hold him for a minute," Hattie said as she readied his high chair. It was hard to understand. Sometimes she'd act like I was Eric's big sister, allowing me to hold him and feed him. But at other times, she'd order me away from Eric as if I were the Whitfield Slasher.

Hattie handed him to me, and I was engulfed in wild hugs and snuggles.

"The Winter Solstice is right around the corner," Hattie said.

I waited for her to say more. She didn't. "Yay," I said, hoping to sound enthusiastic.

"It won't be busy here. This is a low energy time of year. Since we won't be cooking much, I thought maybe you could use the time to help Peter learn some binding spells." When I didn't answer right away, she added, "I'll pay you the same as if you were working in the kitchen."

"It's not that," I said. "But I don't think I can. I don't know any binding spells. I don't even . . ."

At that moment a huge meat cleaver shot out of a drawer and flew right a Peter's head. I gasped. By the time he turned around, it was headed straight for his right eye.

And then it stopped. Just froze in midflight for a nanosecond before I knocked it away.

"You see, you do know how to do a binding spell," Hattie said.

"Told you," Peter muttered. "You don't even have to practice."

"Excuse me?!" I shouted. "Was it my imagination, or did you two not notice that Peter almost became a cubist sculpture?"

Hattie chuckled in that low, maddeningly calm way she had. "Shoot, girl, I knew you weren't about to let pretty Pete get sliced in two."

"But I didn't . . ." I began, but the steam kind of got knocked out of me, because I knew I did. I'd seen the knife coming, and – I don't know, I'd just made it stop.

"Katy will be a great witch one day," Hattie said to Peter. "Learn what you can, and don't be macho about it."

Peter laughed. "I'll try to keep it under control," he said.

As if _control_ weren't already his middle name. Peter Control Shaw. Perfect.

It was all very awkward, being Peter's teacher. I was doing this stuff for the first time myself. The problem was, I didn't have to learn how to do these spells. They just seemed to happen. So I had to dissect every move, every thought, and hope that my analysis was correct.

In the beginning I tried variations of Hattie's knife trick, pushing things like books and cabbages toward him, but Peter was so inept at magic that everything ended up smacking him in the face. I felt terrible about that. Well, only a little bit, to be honest. It was kinda funny. So I tried another tack, using inanimate objects as targets.

"Just wrap a cord around this tomato," I instructed. One time I actually saw the bindings, so I knew he had some potential. They were little tendrils of thoughts or intentions or something that oozed out of Peter's eyes and fingers and forehead and wrapped weakly around the big beefsteak tomato we were using.

"Make it tighter," I said.

"I don't know how."

"Concentrate!" Sometimes it was just so frustrating. There wasn't really anything to do _except_ concentrating. It wasn't even about thinking. "Just focus," I said, and then, without meaning to, _I _focused. That was always the problem. I couldn't teach by showing him how to do something, because then I'd end up doing it for him, like with the tomato. As soon as I started to focus, my own binding threads snapped taut around Peter's, and the tomato disintegrated, squirting pulp all over both of us.

"Sorry," I said, wiping tomato out of my eyes. "Hey, maybe that was you."

"Yeah. Right." He tipped his head. Juice poured out of his ear. We both laughed.

"You're getting better though," I said. "I saw the strings."

"Did you?"

I looked at him. "Didn't you?"

"No."

So I knew where to begin. Since we both had passes to leave the school grounds, I took him to the Meadow at night. The place was so full of magic to begin with that anything magical done there was magnified.

First I set up a gallon jar of mayonnaise about twenty feet away. It was white, so we could both see it clearly in the moonlight. "Now watch me," I said. "I'm going to focus on that mayo jar. Look for strings coming off me."

"Strings?"

"Sort of. You should be able to see them here. Just watch me."

I concentrated on the jar. Almost immediately I could feel the binding begin. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the threads emanating like wisps of smoke from all over me. It began as kind of a nimbus around me, a sort of full-body halo, and then it went wherever I directed it. I raised my arms so that the energy concentrated in my fingers, and poured out of them.

"This is what it's about," I said, marveling at what was happening. "The body. It has to all come out in one place instead of floating away."

"I see it, Katy," Peter said.

"Good. Now you try it. Keep it in your body. Remember that you're a physical being, not a mind. The magic starts in your _cells_," I said, quoting Agnes.

"Huh?"

"Just do it." I sneaked a peek at Peter. I could see his energy building around him. "That's it," I whispered. In the moonlight it glowed in iridescent colors, as luminous as a comet.

Peter's face was transfigured by the awareness of his own magic. "I'm doing it," he whispered.

"Yes."

Slowly he raised his hands, and the light snaked out of his fingers in ten strong beams. Then he moved toward me. His light merged with mine, creating what looked like a tunnel of starlight, bright enough to be seen by ships at sea.

"I can't believe it," he said.

"Shh," I said. "Don't think. Just be here. With me."

The light intensified, brightening until it was something more than visual. It almost seemed to hum with magic, a low buzz that filled me like warm honey. It was moving out of me, yet coming into me at the same time, and through it all, Peter was with me. Not just beside me, but _there_, in the hum with me, in the honey.

I felt my breath coming faster. The whole Meadow was alight now, the white mayo jar shining like a July moon. My skin was tingling. I felt a thousand times bigger than my body. And Peter was no longer separate from me, but another part of my being, around me. Inside me.

And then his lips were touching mine, soft as roses.

For real. It took me a moment to realize that this wasn't part of the magic, that Peter Shaw was really kissing me, and I was kissing him back.

The glowing jar in the distance exploded, and a fountain of sparkling glass fragments showered the night sky. Our fingers touched, extinguishing the light that had come from them. There was nothing now but the night and the Meadow and Peter and me. I held onto him for my life. My life.

"I'm . . . I'm sorry," he said, pulling away from me. "I have to go."

_Go? _"Why?" I was so confused. "It's all right."

"No," he said. "We can't do this. Not ever again."

"But . . . the magic . . . You did it. You're not cowen."

"You can't understand," he said. "I should never have let this happen."

"Don't . . ." It was so hard to ask. "Don't you want me?" My hands touched his face. He held one, kissing my palm.

Then he left. Just like that, into the dark.

I looked down at my hands. They glowed faintly, as if remembering the touch of him. I could still feel the heat from his mouth on mine. But he was gone.

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**A/N: Love or magic? Decisions, decisions. I'd really like a review please. I haven't gotten any in a while, and I want to know what you think of the chapter. Is the story worth continuing. Even if you don't review, I still appreciate you taking the time to read. I'll post the next chapter soon. :) **


	14. Yule

**A/N: I am now back from vacation so updates should be coming regularly. It was also crazy because I moved from Minnesota to Texas and if anyone has ever moved before, you know how crazy that is. I also have an announcement. My story Sugar Plum Princess has been nominated for "Most Promising Twilight Fanfiction - canon" I would appreciate it if you would vote for me. Voting is from July 13th to July 20th. The link to the website and more information is posted on my profile in the "Notifications:" section.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or Witch & Wizard.**

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**CHAPTER 14: YULE**

My cell phone rang at five in the morning. It was my dad.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Of course. I'm calling from the speakerphone in Madison's London office."

Ah. That must have been why he'd forgotten the six hour time difference between us, I thought grouchily. "Well, all right Dad. What's up?"

"Honey, I have great news."

There was a long pause. "Are you talking to me?" I asked finally.

"Of course!" He laughed out loud. "You're not going to believe this, Katherine."

_Please, PLEASE don't say you're getting married_, I thought fervently.

"You're going to join us!"

Another pause. "Wh – What?"

"Madison has agreed to buy you a ticket. Don't worry about missing classes. A week here with me would be worth a semester of school. That is, if medievalism is even taught at Ainsworth."

"Uh . . ."

"I'll have to be at Cambridge for a few days, but Madison would love to take you shopping, or doing whatever women do."

"Um, I don't know, Dad. I'm in the middle of a lot of things here, and –"

"Oh come on! Where's your sense of spontaneity? You haven't seen us in months."

"Yes. That's why I sent you an email. I have to talk with you."

"About what?"

"About changing your name. I need to know, Dad. People here –"

"You're spoiling everything, Katherine," he growled. "Hold on." Sweet-sounding talk in the background. "Fine, fine," I heard him say before exhaling noisily into the mouthpiece. "Madison would like you to pick up some things from her office in New York before you come."

"What things?" I asked.

"What things," he repeated.

Mim came on the line. "A bottle of nail polish, Love. Crucial Fuscial. And a couple of other things. Some pills I forgot to bring. My secretary will get everything from my apartment. Just take a bus into the city and pick them up at the front desk. I'll give you the address."

"You want me to fly to London to bring you a bottle of nail polish and some pills?" I asked disbelievingly.

"No," she said with exaggerated patience," I want you to fly to London – _at my expense_ – to have a wonderful time. The nail polish doesn't matter at all, really. It just would have been a nice thing for you to do."

"I see. Well, if it really doesn't matter, I think I'll pass."

"Why, you . . ." I could hear her fingernails scraping against the mouthpiece as she passed the phone to my father.

"What's the problem?" he asked wearily.

He was bored. This wouldn't take much longer. "Much as I'd love to see you both, Dad, I think I'd better stay at school and study. I'm having some problems with geometry."

"Is your GPA compromised?" he asked, clearly alarmed. "This semester is going to count in your college applications, you know."

"I know. I think I'll be all right, as long as I take things seriously." He loved that phase: "take things seriously."

"All right. Got to go, Katy Baby. Do you need anything?" Dad asked.

"No Dad."

"See you later then." Mim was already screeching. It had no doubt been the forgotten pills that had prompted the phone call. Well, now she'd just have to do without them, and Dad might get a chance to see what she was really like.

And I'd get to spend Christmas alone.

I didn't care. That would still be better than being Mim's drug mule.

I checked the clock on my nightstand: 5:09 a.m. Dad and Mim had gotten me so flustered that there was no way that I'd be able to fall back asleep anytime soon. _Great_. More time to think about how Peter Shaw kissed me and then ditched me in the Meadow.

It had been the most intimate experience I'd ever had, and I thought he was sharing every moment with me. I felt my eyes filling. I could still feel his soft lips touching me like clouds. Like moonlight.

It hurt, knowing that Peter wouldn't remember the moment the same way I did, but in a horrible sort of way, I was still glad it happened. I'd taught Peter something that even Hattie hadn't been able to, and I was proud of that. There was something I needed to do.

At around nine in the morning, I knocked on Gram and Agnes' door.

"I've been teaching binding spells to Peter Shaw," I declared by way of greeting.

"We know, Dear," Gram said. "Hattie told us. Won't you come in?"

The invitation surprised me. "You're not mad?"

Agnes ushered me in. "Oh, many would say that we are quite mad," she said with a quiet chuckle. "But no, we're not angry with you, if that was your question."

"We're proud of you," Gram said. "Using magic to help others is the whole point of living in a magical community."

"But you said I shouldn't be with Peter."

"That's not true," Agnes objected. "We said that Pete would know better than to be with _you_."

I was blushing furiously. "Why? Because of Hattie? Or you? Something one of you told him?"

"No, Dear," Gram said.

End of sentence. No matter how I sliced it, Peter just wasn't that into me, and even my great-grandmother knew it. "All right," I said with a sigh. That didn't change anything. I'd said what I came to say. "I'll be going now. Have a nice holiday."

Then I noticed the fireplace. Hanging beneath the mantel were three stockings, elaborately embroidered and decorated with appliqued holly leaves and ivy. The one in the middle had my name on it, KATY, in big red letters. "You made me a stocking?" I asked disbelievingly.

Gram smiled. "For your first Christmas." Her voice cracked. "Except for the name. I changed that yesterday."

"Every year since you left Whitfield, we've hung it up, hoping you'd come back," Agnes said.

I threw my arms around them. Even Peter's rejection didn't hurt so much anymore.

"Won't you stay with us for a while?" Gram pleaded.

"As long as you'll have me," I said.

Hattie was right. The solstice – Yule to the witches – was a quiet time. Gram and Agnes and I went into the woods and cut down a little tree, which we decorated with real beeswax candles. We put candles in all of the windows, too, and made garlands of ivy and holly to wind around the stair railings and doorways. In the evenings, we'd sit around the fire while my great-grandmother told stories or Agnes played the piano. She was very good, although she played with an almost embarrassing passion. Sometimes Gram twanged along on her dulcimer, which generally didn't improve the music, but added a homespun touch. During the days, we'd all cook together or go walking through town. Sometimes I'd hang out with Jonathan and he'd teach me about carpentry. Or I'd walk alone through the woods. It was important that I kept busy. Anything to avoid running into Peter. Or thinking about him, although I didn't manage that very well.

It's true what they say about time being a great healer. I wasn't over Peter – I didn't think I ever really would be – but the edges of the wound I felt in my heart weren't so raw anymore. And inside that wound was still the memory of his kiss. Nothing would ever take that away. Sometimes just the thought of his touch would be enough to make me feel weak. The memory was so powerful, so immediate, that it was as if I were right back in the Meadow with him, holding him, being held.

One day Gram, Agnes, and I went to Hattie's to bake pies for the local nursing home. The one that Gram had sworn she would never live in. I could just imagine what that was like, and old folk's home for witches. Miss P showed up too. Even though Miss P was a few years younger than my aunt, the two of them got along famously.

I was stirring pastry cream in the twenty-gallon mixer when Peter came into the kitchen.

I stopped breathing.

"Excuse me," he said. He was heading toward Hattie when he saw me.

In that instant time ceased to exist. His eyes, gray and deep and full of a pain I didn't understand, searched inside mine until they found my soul. And I gave it to him, there, across the noisy, bright kitchen.

_I'm yours_, it called to him.

_You're mine_, his called back. _From the beginning, you were meant to be mine._

"Peter!" Hattie shouted. "What do you want?"

"It . . . it's Eric," he stammered. "I think he needs his medicine."

"I'll be right up," Hattie said, wiping her hands on her apron.

The spell was broken. Spell? Who was I kidding? That was nothing but wishful thinking.

_I'm yours. _Geez, how corny could you get? I went back to stirring my pastry cream.

"Peter!" Hattie called again. When I looked up, a strong brown arm was snaking around the door, grabbing Peter's shirt, and yanking him out of the room.

He was still looking at me.

The kitchen was weirdly quiet. "What?" I snapped crankily, irritated at the nosy women who were so interested in my nonexistent love life that they'd all dropped what they were doing and stood gawking at me.

Wishful thinking. That was all it was.

On the night of the Winter Solstice we lit all the candles in the windows and all the candles on the tree too. They filled the room with warm, flickering light. Sitting on an old horsehair sofa between my aunt and my great-grandmother, with no television or recorded music in the background, I felt as if I'd been transported back in time.

"Yule teaches us a great lesson," Gram said. "It is the darkest time of the year, with the shortest day and the longest night."

"Mmm," I murmured as noncommittally as I could.

"It means that things have gotten as bad as they can get," Agnes said. "One tick after the moment of the darkest night, the light begins to grow."

"We call it the birth of the infant light," the old woman said. "Another word for hope."

I sat up straighter. Hope, yes. No matter how bad things were, hope was possible. Maybe even with Peter. "I'll try to remember that," I said.

"Very good. Now, shall we try a cone of power?" Gram asked. "And then perhaps a cup of tea?"

"A cone of what?"

"We'll make a wish," she said.

"For power?"

"For whatever you'd like, Dear," she said.

"Like world peace," I suggested. That seemed like a safe bet.

The two of them looked at one another. "Certainly, Dear, if that is what you want. Or power, if–"

"No, no," I amended quickly. "I didn't mean – that is, world peace would be fine."

"It doesn't have to be an unselfish wish," Agnes said.

I was confused. "But then . . . well, it wouldn't be _good_, would it?"

"Do we always have to be good?" That sounded strange coming from and eighty-something-year-old woman.

"Grandmother!" Agnes admonished, shocked that she would say such a thing. "She means, Katy, that it's all right to be kind to yourself. Always doing for others is a sure path to resentment."

I'd never thought of things quite in that way before. Yes, I could be kind to myself, I supposed. Now, what did I want?

Peter's face came to mind. His beautiful face, his soft lips . . .

No, not _that_. I couldn't wish for _that_.

World peace. That was safer.

We held hands. Agnes began a sort of wordless chant, a low singing sound deep in her throat. Then Gram joined her, her own voice high and warbly, sounding a lot like Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in _The Wizard of Oz_. I almost laughed out loud. Then both of them squeezed my hands and I realized that they were waiting for me to join in on the chant too.

I panicked. What was I supposed to say? Or worse yet, _sing_?

I decided just to hum. Humming for world peace was okay.

_Hmm. Hmmm._

The air in the space between us began to vibrate, then to move in a circle like a tornado in reverse. It rose slowly off the ground, tapering to a point as it grew.

_I've done this_, I thought. It was how I'd arranged Mim's papers in her apartment before I'd pushed them out the window. That had been pretty juvenile, I had to admit. My thoughts at the time hadn't exactly been on world peace.

Which I really should have been concentrating on now. World peace. Yes.

Only something was getting in the way of that concentration. Try as I might to see ethnically diverse hands clasping one another in friendship across an ocean, all I could really see was . . .

Peter. Peter's eyes, filled with the suffering of a thousand years . . . Peter . . . oh, Peter . . .

The cone whirled, almost too strong for our arms to contain it. Things were flying around the room. I felt my hair flying out behind me. My breath came in ragged gasps. _Peter, my love, my true, my only love . . ._

With an audible _whoosh_ the energy in the cone shot through the ceiling. Crap, I thought. What a time to be daydreaming. "World Pete!" I shouted. "I mean _peach_! That is . . ."

Agnes held up her hand for me to be quiet. I hung my head.

Afterward, everything was still. The knickknacks that had gone flying all returned to their original place. The room looked as if nothing had ever happened. "What were you saying Katy?" Agnes asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Peace," I whispered. I knew I'd probably blown the whole spell. "I ruined it, didn't I," I said quietly.

Gram straightened her doily, which had gone askew during the proceedings and now hung over one eye. "No one ever knows if a spell will work or not," she said. "We just send out our intentions, and hope for the best."

I felt bad. Even my intentions had gotten screwed up. There would be no world peace now, thanks to me.

"What did you wish for, Dear?" Gram asked Agnes.

"That's no one's business but mine."

"That means it was about Jonathan," Gram said with a wicked grin. "Although you needn't waste a spell on that. Anyone can see that he couldn't be more head over heels about you."

"I know nothing of the kind," Agnes said, walking away. Her hair had fallen out of its usual neat chignon and hung in pretty tendrils around her face. She was fanning herself with the electric bill as she left the room.

"The Ainsworth women are famous for their love spells," Gram said. "We are artists in the field."

"Is . . . is that what you wished for, then?" I asked, not sure if I even wanted to hear the answer.

"Me? Oh, good heavens, no. I wished that blasted Wonderland didn't get built on the Meadow. I wished hard, too."

"The Meadow?" I asked, shocked. "Is that where it's supposed to be built?"

"I'm afraid so," she said sadly.

"But . . . but . . ."

"It doesn't bear thinking about," she said, closing her eyes to the prospect. "Although I've heard they're very close to an agreement with Jeremiah Shaw."

"Who?" I asked, wondering if I had heard the last name right.

"Naturally, a cowen Shaw would own the deed."

"He owns no such thing," Agnes said, coming back into the room with three glasses of apple cider and a plate of sandwiches. "Everyone knows that the Meadow has been public land since Whitfield was founded."

"Nevertheless, the Shaws have paid the taxes on it." The old woman shook her head. "We always said it was a waste of money, paying taxes on property they didn't own. We never thought that even a Shaw would try to _sell_ it."

"Or buy it," Agnes added. "Only something as soulless as the Wonderland Corporation would even think of disregarding the Meadow's magic."

"Madam Mim," I said.

"Who?"

"The soulless something at the heart of Wonderland," I said. "My father's girlfriend."

No one spoke for a while. Finally Gram said, "Well maybe the negotiations won't go through. The Meadow has strong magic.

Aunt Agnes took my stocking from its place over the fireplace and brought it to me. "I don't know," she said. "There are some forces that even magic can't stop, and Wonderland may be one of them."

We exchanged gifts. I gave Agnes some tortoiseshell hair combs that I'd bought in an antique store with my earnings from Hattie's. For Gram, I had a big box of English toffees. I'd made them at night while she was asleep. I'd cooked them using sugar and butter and vanilla, then cooled them and cut them and coated them with the best dark chocolate I could find. Then I'd put them in a pretty box that I'd covered with handmade paper and silk ribbon. I think she liked them.

In my stocking were two treasures. From Agnes, a handwritten book of spells on a level I'd never known about before.

"Time travel?" I asked, reading through the table of contents.

"Very advanced," Agnes said gravely. "You won't be able to perform any of these for years, but they're worth looking at, all the same."

"Thank you," I said. And I meant it.

I loved Whitfield.

"My great-grandmother gave me a brooch that had belonged to Serenity Ainsworth. It was a carved ivory cameo on a background of reddish stone.

"Carnelian," Gram said. "It is the stone of warriors, for that was what Serenity was, in her own way. She was not cowed by adversity, nor influenced by the opinions of others. She was your namesake, and I hope that you make of your life as much as she made of hers."

"Thank . . ." I was having a hard time pulling off the think plastic that encased it.

"I had it shrink wrapped," Agnes added. "We know about your psychometric abilities. That was why we changed all the furniture in your mother's room. You may not be ready to explore Serenity's inner being so late in the evening."

"Oh. Yes," I said, "that was thoughtful. I'll choose the right time to . . . explore."

By then, the fire was dimming to embers, and the candles were guttering. Agnes passed around the glasses of cider she'd brought in, the raised her own glass in a toast.

"To world peach!" she proposed.

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**A/N: As you can see, this is the longest chapter yet. I would really appreciate it if you would review, favorite, follow and/or add it to a community. Please, let me know what you think. Suggestions are always welcome. Please check out my other stories an vote on my poll. Lastly, please vote for my story Sugar Plum Princess! Thanks for reading and I will update as soon as possible. :)**


	15. Imbolc

**A/N: I crammed to get this all typed up and ready to go today. Like I explained before, I wrote this story with a friend when I was younger, so I have it all written in a notebook. A few notebooks, actually. It's just the typing that takes a lot of time. Anyway, enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: Don't own it, never have, never will!**

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**CHAPTER 15: IMBOLC**

The next big witch holiday was Imbolc, a.k.a. Groundhog Day. I know, you wouldn't think that Groundhog Day was a cause for celebration, but in the magical community, it is a huge deal. It's almost as important as Yule, a.k.a. Christmas.

Back in the day, before the birth of Punxsutawney Phil, the men of the village would gather together on February second to take someone's pet snake and put it in a hole in the ground. Then they'd hang around the chewing fat and drinking tankards of ale until the snake came out again.

When the snake found its way out of the hole, it either turned around and crawled back underground, meaning that six more weeks of winter were on the way, or else it slithered away to freedom, in which case the village elders had to chase it through the woods and put it back into its cage until next year.

Personally, my theory is that most of the time the snake got away, but the elders (who had probably chewed more fat and drunk more ale than they should to be in prime snake-chasing condition) lied and said more winter was coming, because any fool would have known that spring wasn't about to burst forth on February second. This annual ritual was known as _Imbolc_, possibly because "Snake Day" would have sounded sketchy, even then.

No one bothered with the snake thing anymore, although judging from the noises coming from the local bars, I think the tradition of drinking ale in the morning was still in force. It was all symbolic, anyway. In some weird Celtic language, Imbolc means "in the belly," as in the beginning of the beginning. It's the _I-think-we-might-make-it-after-all _moment when spring starts to become an actual possibility.

As a major holiday, Imbolc is entitled to fog. That is, Fog. The Meadow was covered in it, the tour buses marveled at it, and lost cowen were graciously led out of it by Mr. Haversall and the trusty Dingo. But the witches just stomped through it until they reached the plane of magic. For the occasion, the Meadow was transformed (as it turned out, by Hattie, who was Whitfield's current high priestess for ceremonial events) into a gigantic labyrinth. Not a maze, mind you, but a winding kind of meditative path, where everyone takes a minute – actually an hour or so – to figure out their lives.

I stayed overnight with the Ainsworths so that we could get an early start. Did I say _early_? I was shaken awake at an obscene hour, before there were even streaks of dark blue mixed in with the black of the night.

"Why? _Why_?" I'd begged to know as I was being dragged out of bed by my cheerfully sadistic relatives.

"So that you can get to school on time afterward," Agnes said.

Gram opened my window, letting in a blast of arctic air. "Bracing," she said, taking a deep breath. "Dress warmly, Katy."

New Englanders were extraterrestrials.

To my extreme astonishment, there were actually a few people ahead of us. Wanted to beat the big rush, I guess.

"Now, this is a silent walking meditation," Gram warned me, as if she was worried that I would start clapping and shouting "Amen."

Frankly, in my opinion, Imbolc was one of the least interesting of the witch holidays. I mean, you'd have to have a tamer life than I did to get a charge out of waiting for spring in the beginning of February.

"Go on," Agnes said, nudging me forward behind my great-grandmother. I supposed there was finally enough space between the first labyrinth walkers and us that no one would bother anyone else's meditating. It all seemed silly to me, anyway.

But at least it was a chance for me to get out of my dorm room, where I'd been going stir crazy. I'd been laid off at Hattie's due to inclement weather, which was apparently the climatic condition for every day from mid-January to mid-March. I didn't mind, though. It would have been hard to work with Peter every day. I kept my feelings at heart, where the wound was still open, but bearable. I'd learned long ago that almost anything was bearable if you kept it secret enough.

"AHHHHHHH!" Someone from the group in the labyrinth in front of us screamed. Instantly all of my thoughts flew out of my head. Agnes pushed past me and ran up ahead. I followed her.

When we reached them the group was gathered around a dead crow on the path. Nearby, an elderly man had his arm around a distraught woman while some other people looked on with expressions of horror.

Agnes stopped in her tracks when she saw it. And Gram, when she finally caught up, nearly fainted.

"It's . . . it's a bird," I said quietly. Agnes pinched me to be quiet.

"We should go," Agnes said. Then she picked up the thing by its wings, and we walked out of the labyrinth the same way we'd come.

Once we were back home, Agnes and I buried it in the woods while Gram walked through the house with a bundle of burning sage. Call me callous, but it seemed like a lot of trouble to go through for a bird, especially one that wasn't even anyone's pet. Then when Jonathan showed up for work, Agnes made him go over to the Meadow to make sure there weren't any other dead birds lying around.

"There's bound to be talk as it is," she said. "Quite a few people saw it."

He sighed. "They'll be calling it an omen, then," he said. "But I'll do what I can. Say my dog killed it or something."

After he left I walked along beside Agnes back to the house. She looked thoughtful. "Dead birds have a special meaning for us here. They're harbingers."

I was trying to understand what she was saying. "Harbingers? Of, like . . . doom?"

"Of the Darkness," she said. "For a witch, it is the worst thing there is. Once the Darkness comes, the whole world changes, and nothing is ever the same again."

"What?" I said, coming to a standstill. Aunt Agnes wasn't prone to exaggeration. "The whole _world_? You aren't serious."

She looked at me for a moment, assessing my ability to handle this kind of news, I guess. "The Black Death. The Great Depression. The San Francisco earthquake. The influenza epidemic of 1918. Those are just a few examples."

I ventured a guess. "The Burning Times?"

Her head snapped sharply toward me. "You know about that?"

"It's in every American history book," I said.

"Oh. Of course. I suppose we're ridiculously sensitive about that here."

"Understandable," I said. "I read somewhere that as many as nine million people were killed as witches."

"Over the span of three hundred years throughout Europe and England and their colonies. There are no figures for the killings in Asia and Africa, although we are certain they occurred."

"And you think the Darkness was responsible for that?"

She looked at me levelly. "We know this, Katy."

"But . . . but how? The Darkness isn't even a real thing, is it?"

"Oh, it's real all right. But it's not a thing. It's a force. It works through people."

"Cowen, according to Gram," I said.

"It starts there. Cowen are easy to influence. They don't tolerate adversity well, and their wills are weak. It doesn't take much to make them turn evil – lack of money, addiction, even a failed relationship is sometimes enough for them to turn their backs on decency and reason. And they almost never recognize that they're evil, so they can't stop. They just keep blaming someone or something else for what's happening, while their destructive impulses run rampant. And the whole time they have no clue that it's the Darkness at work."

"But witches aren't like that?" I asked.

"Less so. But we're human. We're susceptible, too, especially if someone close to us has been infected. And if that happens . . ." She shook her head. "Well, it's a terrible thing."

"Is that why you don't marry outside the twenty-seven families? Because you don't want cowen to bring the Darkness into Old Town?"

"Exactly. We've learned this through experience. There have been incidents that we don't want to repeat."

"Like what?" I asked.

She was silent for a moment. "You're not ready to learn about those things yet," she said.

"That's not fair, Agnes," I countered.

She smiled. "You're just too young to be hearing that kind of history. But you ought to know the harbingers, if only so you understand why we're scared silly by the sight of a dead bird."

"It did seem like kind of an overreaction," I admitted. "Are you afraid of all dead birds?" I asked. "Even if they die of old age?"

She laughed. "No. But this one was dead in the labyrinth. That will be taken as a sign. And it may be a sign. Now everyone will be waiting for the second harbinger."

"Which is?"

"Sinkholes," Agnes said.

"What?" I couldn't help smiling. "But they're everywhere, aren't they?"

"So are birds."

She had me there.

"Do you see? It's hard to tell fact from baseless fear. That's why people here panic so easily."

We'd arrived back at the house. I wiped my feet on the mat outside the kitchen door. "But witches should be able to tell the difference, shouldn't they?" I asked.

"Some can. We're all different. Serenity Ainsworth was the first to notice the progression. First the birds, then the sinkholes. So when the sinkholes don't appear, the panic usually subsides. Unless . . ."

"Oh!" It was Gram, sounding as if someone had put a whoopee cushion on her pew in church. Shocked, distressed, and disgusted.

Agnes pushed me aside. "Unless what?" I insisted, but she ignored me.

"What is it, Grandmother?" she asked.

Gram was holding a copy of the _Whitfield Sentinel_. "This," she said with supreme disdain. She rotated the newspaper so that the front page faced us. The banner headline across the top read:

**Wonderland a Go: 300+ Jobs Expected**

Beneath it was a picture of a man identified as Jeremiah Shaw, who greatly resembled the mummified remains of Pharaoh Ramses II. With him was – who else? Madison Mimson, spokesperson for Wonderland USA.

That day –the school didn't close for holidays – Ainsworth Prep was buzzing with the news about Wonderland, clearly separating the cowen from the witches. Hence: "My mom's already been offered a job in the legal department," versus: Grandma says that without the Meadow, we might as well all move to Boston.

It was the central discussion in social studies. We talked about the rise of corporations in American history. Naturally, Wonderland was the day's topic in Existentialism in Fiction.

All I knew was that Mad Madam Mim was coming to Whitfield. I got an email from her:

**Can't wait to see you, Kathy. Be sure to tell your friends about Wonderland's fabulous spring fashions! Coupons attached, good at all participating outlets. Print and clip!**

Very personal. Not to mention the fact that, hello, this was February in Massachusetts, with weather more suited to mukluks than spring fashions.

And speaking of muck, that was almost certainly going to be the composition of my world once Madison Lee Mimson moved into it. I didn't want her going to my father with any juicy tidbits about me. Like I was way think with his in-laws, whom he thought were out of my life forever and, incidentally, were card-carrying witches.

_Oh, and BTW, Dad, I myself am telekinetic, pick up on the thoughts of dead people, and work for the high priestess of the village._

Yeah, that would go over great.

So far Imbolc hadn't turned out to be the funfest it was cracked up to be, but there was one more ritual before the day ended, and I was looking forward to it.

Before I left the relatives to go to school, they gave me a funny-looking cross made of intricately woven stalks of wheat. "This is a Cross of Brigid, named for the ancient goddess of fire," Gram said. "Sleep with this under your pillow tonight, and you'll dream of the man you're going to marry."

So I was ready. Not that I believed in things like that. But I wanted to dream about someone besides Peter, for a change. I needed to stop thinking about him. I needed to move on. It would have been better for me to just cut ties. Spare my heart. The problem was, I just didn't know how to live without loving him.

So of course I dreamed about Peter.

He was sitting backward on a wooden-backed chair, naked from the waist up. His lean, well-muscled chest glistened with sweat, but the skin of his back was striped with a series of long, bleeding cuts, as if he'd been whipped.

His arms lay crossed along the top of the chair, and on them he rested his head. Impossibly fatigued, his smoky eyes were narrowed to slits beneath the fall of his sweat-matted hair, and his lips were bruised and swollen.

"Please stop," he begged, barely able to speak.

I didn't see anyone else in the room with him, but there must have been someone, because Peter appeared to be scared to death.

"Please," he begged again. "Just leave me alone. Leave me . . ."

Then his back arched and his head snapped back. A scream began in his throat, but he cut it off with a tremendous effort of will. His beautiful face was contorted in agony. He bit his lip until it bled, nearly crazy with the need to keep silent through the pain.

This time I heard his skin tearing.

"No!" I shouted, lurching bolt upright in my bed. I blinked. My heart was pounding, my throat dry with panic. My breathing was wild and shallow, like a caged animal.

I looked out the window of my room. Outside, a full moon shone on the lake, reflecting beautiful colors on the ice.

_It's okay_, I told myself. _Just a bad dream_.

I turned on the light, put on headphones, and loaded my "favorites" playlist to clear my head. Then I remembered the Cross of Brigid under my pillow, and tossed it into the wastebasket. Stupid superstition.

I looked around, as if to reassure myself that I was really awake, because I didn't ever want to go back into that dream. This was my room, check, fully real. My wicker nightstand with my mother's photograph in a white ceramic frame. And on the walls, a series of Eric's amazing drawings of birds in flight.

Once again I sat up with a jolt, this time tearing the headphones off. The music sounded tinny, spilling out onto my bed. Then slowly, my hands shaking, I walked over to Eric's latest drawing and took it off the wall. There was something there, something I hadn't noticed before. I held it under my study lamp to be sure.

_Oh, God, _I thought. In the corner, beneath the swirling pattern of the flying birds, was a stationary object.

How had I missed it? There was so much _motion_ in the drawing. Each bird was moving, its muscles flexed, its wings riding the wind, a part of the flock that also moved as if it were another creature on itself, swooping, whirling, soaring . . .

Except for the one in the corner, inert, still, in such sharp contrast to all the life in the rest of the picture.

Another dead bird.

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**A/N: I hope you liked it. Please review, and don't forget to vote for my story Sugar Plum Princess. Information is posted on my profile. Thanks for reading!**


	16. The Darkness

**A/N: Enjoy the chapter!**

**Disclaimer: I'm feeling lazy, so I'm just going to say that I don't own it. You get the idea.**

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**CHAPTER 16: THE DARKNESS**

It was hard for me to ask Peter to meet me, but I had to know what he thought about the drawings since he knew Eric better than anyone.

As it turned out, he hadn't seen the dead birds either, until we went over all of the drawings with a magnifying glass. There were dead birds in all of them, including the one he'd given me on my first day of work. Some were falling out of the sky. Others were lying on the surface of a lake or stream, or were folded up like rags on the side of a hill. Was he trying to tell us something? What did he know? Was this child more than he cracked up to be?

"Did he always draw birds?" I asked Peter.

"No. That's just been the past few months. He used to draw whatever he saw. Me. Hattie. The bars of his crib. The drawings were always good, but not like the birds. It was as if something was freed inside him when he started drawing them."

I took a deep breath. "Could he have been trying to warn us?"

Peter ran his hand through his hair. "But how is that even possible?" he whispered, almost to himself. "I don't know how he can draw the way he does. He's never seen a bird up close, except for the chicken carcasses Hattie cooks."

Peter had been getting thinner lately, and so pale that his lips seemed to be nearly red in contrast to his fair skin. I wanted to ask him if he felt all right, but things were still really awkward between us.

"Are there more?" I asked. "Recent ones, I mean."

"Yes. A lot." He brought another bunch of them into the kitchen and we went over them, too. It was the same, dead birds everywhere.

There was one difference, though. In the newer drawings, another feature appeared on the terrain beneath the birds. There were indentations on the land, almost like the dimples left in rising dough when you poked your fingers into it. Each one was exquisitely shaded, so that you could almost feel the texture of those pockmarked hills.

"Could those be sinkholes?" I asked. "The second harbinger?"

He blinked. "So you know about that?"

"A little. Agnes told me about the birds. I kind of thought she was kidding about the sinkholes, though. I mean, it seems almost silly."

"It's not silly if your house collapses into one," Peter said solemnly.

"I know, you're right. But why sinkholes?" I thought about it for a moment. "Why birds, for that matter?"

He shrugged. "Maybe it's because the one is above the earth and the other is beneath it. Magic is all about the earth and the seasons and the elements."

"The elements?" I asked. "Like hydrogen?"

He chuckled. "No, like earth, air, fire, and water," he said. "It's strange to be with someone who wasn't raised by witches."

He put his hand over mine. I was so shocked that I just stared at it as if it were an alien creature crawling over my metacarpals. The next second he pulled it away.

Again, as if nothing had ever happened.

"I have work to do," he said, moving toward the walk-in fridge.

"Hold it, Peter," I said. He was running away again, and I couldn't stop him, but there was something I had to find out first. "Are there other harbingers?"

He looked surprised. "Yes, two. Fire and rain."

"Earth, air, fire, and water," I said.

"Witches use them to perform magic. But sometimes the elements get perverted. That's when we know that something big has really gone wrong. We call that the Darkness."

The Darkness. Somehow, everything that had to do with magic in Whitfield eventually involved those two words.

In March a sinkhole appeared in the Meadow.

The witches went wild. On the day it happened, there had been several incidents of sinkholes appearing in people's backyards all around Whitfield, but no one paid much attention, except for the people in whose yards the sinkholes appeared. They were, after all, a geological feature of most of the state, caused by collapsing limestone deposits.

There was a feature on one of the Boston TV news stations speculating that buried tree stumps might have been the cause of this recent rash of disasters. "The stumps rot, and the earth caves in on the place where they used to be," a geologist from the State Department of Environmental Protection explained. He didn't mention why all the sinkholes would appear on the same day, but he did say it wasn't at all surprising.

But the _Meadow_! That was not in the news. Wonderland, the new owner of the property, managed to keep all mention of a sinkhole on the site of its new store out of the media. Of course, a tarp cover and a few distracting signs (ELECTRICAL HAZARD, HIGH VOLTAGE, KEEP OUT! DANGER) weren't enough to fool the witches. Too many Old Town residents had seen the hole before the tarp went over it.

Hattie's Kitchen remained closed until further notice, along with most of the other businesses in Old Town. Attendance at school dropped. People boarded up their houses. They knew what was coming.

Maybe it was better to be cowen, I thought. Normal people never knew when the worst-case scenario was going to come true. Sometimes they didn't even know when it was happening.

All I knew was that, if what was coming was going to be on a par with the Black Death, I wasn't planning to sit on my thumbs and watch while it destroyed the whole world. Whatever the Darkness was, I was going to find out everything I could about it. And then, idiotic as it sounded, I was going to do my damndest to fight it.

I went to the only place I could think of to find answers. Peter's room.

"I'm busy," he said.

"No you're not." I took a deep breath to steady myself. "Look," I said, "I know you feel weird around me, but I need you to tell me about the Darkness."

He tried to push me out, but I held my ground. "I don't know any more about that than anyone else in Old Town. Ask them. Ask your family."

"They don't want me to know," I told him.

"Then I don't either."

"What do you care? Just tell me what you know. Anything."

His eyes scanned the corners of the room, searching for an excuse to get rid of me.

"Please, Peter," I begged. "I'll return the favor someday, I promise."

He relented. "Come in, Katy," he said, standing aside.

Call this Darkness 101, or Everything Peter Shaw Know Or Is Willing To Tell About The Darkness.

First of all, the Darkness isn't a name. It's more of a description in place of a name. No one knows exactly what the Darkness is, which is what makes it so frightening. Fear of the unknown. But though it is unknown, the Darkness did have an origin that people, my people, the witches of Whitfield, have remembered through hundreds of generations.

Peter says he pictures the source of the Darkness as a kind of black cloud that covers half the sky, fuzzy around the edges, from which leak a bunch of thin, snaking tendrils, like invisible wisps of smoke. Before humans came along, these wisps just dissipated into the air like gas bubbles from a tar pit, but with the advent of people – that is, weak, venal, greedy creatures who do not follow natural laws or respect the great forces – the wisps turned into something like tentacles, bigger, thicker, longer, and more powerful than ever. And with every evil brought forth by the humans, the tentacles grew until they slithered out of their hosts like branches of a tree, connecting and coalescing with one another to become even stronger, and darker, and more dangerous.

Now into this mix came the witches. They, too, were human beings, but from the beginning, witches were different. Fortunately for them, they were also useful to the others, the cowen. Some of them may have been clairvoyant, meaning they could see things that weren't in front of their faces – say, a neighboring tribe heading toward the village wearing warpaint – or telekinetic, like Jonathan the teleporting carpenter or myself. Some may have been healers, people of great value in those days when most people didn't live past thirty; or, in rare instances, even oracular (being able to foretell the future like my mother), which I'm told is extremely unusual, even though there have always been lots of fakes who claim they can. The witches were called all sorts of things – magicians, shamans, witch doctors, wise women, _strega_, _inyanga_, _tsukimono-suji_ – whatever name they were given to distinguish them from ordinary people. But they all had one thing in common: They knew things others didn't.

In time, the story goes, the Darkness became dense enough for some of the witches to see it, but by that time it was already too late to stop it. It moved quickly from one person to another, feeding on human fear and anger, expanding in certain weaker personalities to take over their minds entirely. The witches saw this. Another thing they saw was that the Darkness, as opposed to other, lesser kinds of evil, seemed to know what it was doing. When an infected person died, the Darkness leapt out of that person and into the nearest living human body. This meant that, under the right circumstances, perfectly good, strong, intelligent people could be infected as easily as those who were weak, foolish, or naturally prone toward vile behavior. It could, in fact, affect _anyone_.

Even witches.

Now this was a very bad thing, because witches have power. Picture someone – me, say – who can move objects with my mind, going all Gothic and running wild in a knife store. And that isn't even a very powerful skill, as far as magic goes. That is why the twenty-seven families are, even today, so fanatical about keeping the No Cowen rule. Cowen get infected by the Darkness easily. They almost invite it, with their ego trips and lust for dominance. It's not that witches are better people, really. But they have _real_ power, so they don't have to lord anything over anyone else, or act like money is what makes them important, or use sex to get what they want, or do any other crazy things that cowen do. It makes a difference. Witches don't run scared.

That is, except around dead birds and sinkholes and fires and floods.

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**A/N: I hope you liked it! Just a reminder, I'd really appreciate it if you would please vote for my story Sugar Plum Princess. Information and the link to the website is posted on my profile. PM me with any questions or suggestions you may have. Another announcement, my poll has closed if you participated in that. The results are on my profile. Thanks for reading and please review!**


	17. Xenoglossia

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**Disclaimer: Same as always.**

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**CHAPTER 17: XENOGLOSSIA**

"Historically, the Middle Ages was, for witches, anyway, the Hour of the Darkness," Peter said.

"In those days, a witch was anyone who was different from them. Eventually, it also came to mean anyone who the person in charge of them didn't like. In 1484, the most powerful person in the western world, Pope Innocent VIII, declared open season on witches, sending out large teams of hit men to burn old ladies and grab their property. The sad thing was, most of the women they tortured weren't even witches."

"Cowen wouldn't even know what those creeps were up to," I said. "At least witches had the harbingers to warn them." I looked at him. "Or did they?"

"Of course. At least they did after Serenity Ainsworth pointed them out."

"Serenity . . . Hey, wait a second," I said before running out of the room.

Actually, it takes a lot longer than a second to run from Peter's dorm to mine and back again. By the time I returned, panting and wheezing from my Olympic-level sprint, he was lying stretched out on his bed, his notebook propped on his knees.

"Hey, Peter, can you –"

"Hold it," he said, shooting five fingers at me. That is when you put your thumb over your four fingernails and then flick all your fingers in the direction of someone or something. It helps to concentrate your energy. Anyway, Peter shot five fingers in what I guessed was supposed to be a binding spell, but it only produced a lot of sticky filaments.

"Ewww." I felt as if I'd walked into a giant spiderweb.

"Oh, sorry," he said, jumping out of bed to help clear away the gooey strings. "I meant to immobilize you."

"Well, you got as far as grossing me out," I complained.

"I see. Would you call that a start?"

I laughed. "I should have pretended it worked," I said.

"But of course. Isn't that what girls are supposed to do?"

"I'll remember that next time."

"Seriously, though, I'm getting better," he said.

"Seriously, you are."

"I've just never been able to get to the level that I reached when you were with me." He blushed. "I guess that was you."

"It was the Meadow," I said quietly. "Magic happens easily there." I looked away. Some things were better forgotten. I only wished I could forget them.

When I looked back, his eyes, deep and gray and troubled as the winter sea, met mine. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, what he was feeling, why, why, why . . . But instead, I fished the little plastic-coated cameo out of my pocket. It was what I'd gone to retrieve, after all.

"This was Serenity's," I said. "My great-grandmother gave it to me for Christmas."

He picked it up. "Why is it sealed like that?"

"Because of what I might pick up."

He looked puzzled for a moment, then understood. "Oh, her . . . vibes."

"I just did it that one time. But if you're willing to stay with me, I could open this now."

He pulled back slightly. "Are you going to start screaming again?"

"Well . . ." Suddenly it didn't seem like such a great idea. "I don't know. I guess I might." I started to put the thing back in my pocket, but Peter put his hand over mine.

"What I meant was, if you're willing to trust me, I'll look out for you," he said. "I'll try to make sure you don't . . ."

". . . act stupid," I finished.

"I was going to say, 'get hurt.'"

"Oh." There was such a tenderness in his eyes. And a sadness . . .

"Katy . . ."

I broke away from him. "Got scissors?" I asked, tearing at the plastic with my teeth. Anything to avoid the _I-really-like-you-as-a-friend _talk.

Peter fumbled in his desk drawer, but it was too late.

The cameo was free. Its smooth edges felt cool, then warm. Suddenly the room was spinning. I felt a rush in my head. Then the room was gone. Peter was gone. Katy was gone. And Serenity was there. I felt light and floaty, as if I was hovering above her. There was this powerful draw, like her mind was absorbing me. This time, though, I wasn't surprised by the pull. I could feel my namesake drawing me into her secrets until I knew everything.

_I was thirty-two years old when I came to Massachusetts aboard the _Valiant Marie _with my husband Venerable Dalton-Ainsworth and our twin daughters Zenobia and Zethinia. I had known some of the twenty-seven families on board before we'd set sail. A number of them had been witches in London. Others were from Suffolk or Surrey, and some as far away as Edinburgh and Cardiff. We had planned for years to come across the sea together and start a community of our own kind in a place where we hoped we might be safe from the legacy of the Papal Bull._

_But one of the families, the Lyttels, was not meant to enjoy that future, for they had boarded the _Valiant Marie _already infected by the Darkness._

_It had come through an adolescent son who had celebrated his last night in London by lying with a Cheapside tart who died of pox in his arms an hour after their assignation. Sorely fearful, the boy left her in the hay-strewn stall in the alleyway where she'd brought him, and ran home to his family without speaking a word._

_Now, those of us who have seen the Darkness know that it is released through death; and upon the death of its host, it will spring into the next closest body, whether that body be willing to receive it or not. Thus the boy, who had christened Charles Carter Matthew Lyttel, brought the Darkness with him, along with the pox, to the New World._

_Young Charles Lyttel was dead before the _Valiant Marie _ever made landfall, and the rest of the family lay in a state of vile sickness of mind and body, until such a time as it became evident to some among us that the mother, my friend Dorothea Stanton Lyttel, was herself the current host of the Darkness._

_At first we nought but keep them all at a distance, a condition to which the Lyttels themselves agreed readily, as they knew well what contamination this pox could spread over all the twenty-seven families in Salem as well as through all the cowen already established there. But when it became known to all that the Darkness was at work as well, some insisted on the fire._

_I cautioned against it, as I am to loathe to take the life of any human person, most particularly those of my own persuasion but within days we saw the sea birds lying dead in a line across the shore._

_Then came the sinking of the earth in more than twenty places within our settlement alone, and then the fire, caused by lighting during a storm, that made the whole forest burn day after day, despite the rain which did not cease to fall. Then at last appeared the fourth omen, and no one could deny its import: 'Twas flood, the wild tide that did engulf our roadways and drowned our animals that we had need of for milk and meat._

_Four tragedies of earth, air, fire, and water. All saw it, all knew, for these were the Harbingers, the Four Evils of the Darkness, come to claim us as prey. I could protest no longer, for now we were all in danger from the narrow-eyed cowen._

_On a cold night in November, long past the rites of Samhain, the killing fire was lit in a clearing made deep into the dense wood. We did not wish for our act to be known to the populace of Salem; as it was, we knew we could not ourselves remain under any conditions after this dread event. _

_Under the cloak of night, Dorothea Lyttel was led to the stake. The course in this matter is clear; The one who harbors the Darkness must die by fire, as fire is at the heart of the Darkness. This is known to us from the earliest teachings. _

_Alas, it was pitiable indeed to see Mr. Lyttel lead his children away to some place unknown, to live amongst cowen. Not one in that family accused us in anger, though the small children wept, for even Dorothea knew what must be done. As to the rest, we repaired each of us as far from the Darkness when it passed out of the expiring body. It was thus that brave Dorothea Lyttel herself lit the fire that would take her life, and uttered not a cry. But around her, hidden in the wood, the families wept one and all, small child or aged crone, for we all knew how most dreadful our lot had become, to give up one of our own to the Darkness in order to save our community. _

_This was indeed a day of woe. Soon afterward, the cowen of Salem found the burned remains of Dorothea Lyttel and took sport in tormenting all matter of women, threatening them also with the stake and fire, for the Darkness had found its way deep into their hearts long before we had ever come. _

_As for our community, we all walked the distance to a far meadow, which years later we would name White Field, and there we would one day hide from the Darkness and the evil it had brought._

"Katy." Peter was wiping my face with something soft. "Katy, it's time to come back."

I came to slowly. He was cradling me into his arms like a baby. "Where . . . what . . ." I was beginning to remember what I was doing there. "The Darkness." Tears began to course down my face. Peter sopped them up with what I realized was a wet handkerchief. "Do you always carry those?" I asked, so tired that I was barely able to move my lips.

He looked at the white square. "Yes," he said with a gentle smile.

"Did I scream?"

"No, but you were speaking in a strange way. Were you Serenity Ainsworth?"

"I think I was," I said. "Where's the brooch?"

He picked it up off the table behind him. "I'll give it back to your family, if you'd like."

"No. I want to keep it. This was easier than the last time. Not so shocking. Although . . ." My eyes were streaming again.

"I know what you saw, Katy," he said. "You were talking the whole time."

"_They burned their own kind_," I said, wanting to disbelieve it. But I couldn't. I'd seen it with my own – well, with Serenity's – eyes.

"They thought it was the only way to destroy the Darkness."

"But once the cowen got the idea, they just used it to propagate the Darkness, not dispel it. Do you see? The Darkness _used _t. So it couldn't be the solution. The burning was just another part of the problem."

He shook his head. "But what else could they have done? Let the Darkness infect everyone in Salem?"

"Didn't it anyway?" I said. That was why Serenity and the others left for Whitfield. Even though the American colonists didn't burn their witches, Serenity knew that Salem was already a lost cause. "I wonder what happened to the Lyttels," I mused.

"Their descendants are probably still around, either living as solitary witches or thinking they're crazy. There are a lot of people like that out there among the cowen," he said

"But who replaced them? To maintain the twenty-seven families?" I asked.

Peter smiled. "The Shaws," he said. "Zenobia Ainsworth married Henry Shaw . . ."

". . . who didn't change his name," I said

"You got it."

I stood up slowly, groaning with the effort. I felt as if I'd just been through ten rounds of mud wrestling. "I have to go," I said. "Thanks for helping me . . . with everything." I was too tired to be articulate.

I picked up the brooch, gasped, dropped it, then picked it up again. Images of Dorothea Lyttel with her hair on fire came to mind. I forced the image out of my thoughts.

"Leave it," Peter said. "I'll wrap it up for you so you don't have to touch it."

"No, I need to get used to it." I fingered the brooch. Random images. I shut them out one at a time. "This is a new skill for me. If I'm going to use it, I've got to learn to control it." I held it to my forehead. _No images_, I commanded silently, and whatever was inside me obeyed. It was just a brooch again.

I stumbled on my way to the door. Peter caught me. "I'll walk you back to your room," he offered.

With my arm slung around his shoulders like a drunk, we meandered around the maze of hallways until we reached my dorm.

"I guess this is me," I said. He was staring at me. "Is something the matter, Peter?" I asked.

He blinked and looked around, flustered. "No, no," he said, "of course not. Please," he gestured toward my door.

"What is it?" I persisted. I'd known him long enough to recognize the familiar look of anguish in those gray eyes.

He blinked again. Swallowed. "Well. It's nothing, really. Just . . . well, nothing . . ."

"Peter!"

"Oh, it's only . . ." He took a deep breath. "I . . .I was just wondering if . . ."

I was struggling to stifle a yawn.

"Well, I was wondering if you thought it was true," he managed finally. "About the Darkness, that is. That the only way to destroy it is to burn the person alive."

I thought about as much as my feeble and exhausted brain would allow. "No, of course not," I said. "That would be horrible."

"Yes," he whispered.

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, though," I said, trying to sound reassuring. "No one in Whitfield's infected with the Darkness, as far as I know."

"Yes, right." He nodded mechanically.

"Even if it did happen, which it won't, remember that we're living in a town full of very smart witches. One of them would figure something out."

He nodded again and tried to smile, although it didn't look very convincing.

"Anyway, there have been only two harbingers. Birds and sinkholes. Pah. They might not count for anything."

"Of course." He opened my door for me. "Good night," he said.

He turned away before I could say anything else. Not that I had much else to offer. I knew Peter was worried. I was too. Everyone in Old Town knew something was coming, and I doubted if anyone among those very smart witches had the slightest idea what to do about it.

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**A/N: Thanks for reading! Please review!**


	18. Ostara

**A/N: I am so sorry for the wait. I will try to get better about updating more frequently.**

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**CHAPTER 18: OSTARA**

I suppose it was Mim's idea.

Because of the sudden appearance of the sinkhole in the Meadow, groundbreaking for the new Wonderland store had to be delayed while a team of geologists studied the hole, tested the ground with sonar and X-rays, analyzed the groundwater, and determined how much weight the underlying limestone would support.

But instead of leaving the site covered with tarps and HIGH VOLTAGE signs, someone – and it had to have been Mim, because that was her job – had the area transformed overnight into a kid's Easter fantasy. I hated to admit it, but it was a brilliant save.

There were trees in pots with plastic oranges hanging from them, enormous tubs of fresh flowers that were replaced every morning, and live rabbits in an elaborate pen constructed to look like a Beatrix Potter-inspired English cottage. Directly over the sinkhole was a six-foot-tall Easter Bunny in a heated pavilion, seated on a throne of resinous carrots and cabbages with WONDERLAND stamped in parti-colored pastels across the top, ready to pose for pictures that came with coupons good for ten percent off any child's portrait taken in Wonderland's in-store photo studio.

The geologists came at night, after all the rabbits had been stashed in cages and returned to the pet store, and the Easter Bunny's throne hauled aside to reveal the gaping maw of the sinkhole beneath.

This was only in one corner of the Meadow, the corner farthest away from Hattie's Kitchen, and was set off by a charming white picket fence and a huge silk banner announcing the First (and last, since the Meadow would be covered by concrete as soon as construction started) Annual Wonderland Easter Egg Hunt, featuring a petting zoo, craft fair, pony rides, and a drawing for five hundred dollars in Wonderland merchandise, redeemable at the store's grand opening.

This whole spectacle occurred during the Vernal Equinox, which is a witch holiday, but fortunately a minor one. Most of the Old Town residents just stayed away, but some diehards brought flowers to Hattie's Kitchen, which had been out of business since the Meadow was sold to Wonderland, and placed them by the restaurant's closed doors. It was a funeral sight.

Dad had been pestering me to come to New York, and since it was Spring Break, I didn't have much reason to refuse.

Mim wasn't at the Sutton Place apartment when I arrived, so Dad and I had some alone time together. No matter how much I wanted to deny it, I really did miss him.

"How's school going, Katy?" he asked.

"Good," I said.

"Are you keeping your grades up?"

"Yes."

"Making new friends?"

"Uh huh." It was awkward. There was so much I couldn't bring up. Agnes and Gram, witchcraft, Peter . . . none of those seemed like good topics for conversation with Dad. It was going to be a _very _long weekend. But finally I touched on something I thought he might be interested in.

"I'm writing a paper on medieval magic boxes," I said. "They're –"

"Bottes," he said, taking off his glasses.

"You know about them?" I asked.

"I'm a medievalist, Katharine," he reminded me. "But I'm surprised you do."

"I . . .er, found a reference to them online and got interested," I fudged. I wasn't about to out on my Medieval Alchemy teacher, Mrs. Thwacket, over a conversational nugget. "Do you think they ever existed?"

"Oh, yes, certainly. Of course bottes weren't really magic. They were mechanical devices, masterpieces of engineering, with drawers within drawers and false backs and bottoms and secret shelves and panels that opened only in a certain order to reveal still more compartments. To your average medieval denizen, it would have seemed miraculous."

"But they were supposed to be repositories for magical tools. Precious artifacts. Dangerous spells. Things like that."

"Spells?" He sat upright, his face alight. "Where on earth did you read that? Some New Age woo woo website?" He laughed aloud. "Really, Katherine."

I had decided to go up to my room – as far as I was concerned, the conversation was over – when Mim crashed in, loaded as usual with parcels and shopping bags.

"Darling," she breathed, planting a big wet one square on Dad's lips. It was, I must say, repulsive in the extreme. Harrison and Madison: Their names even rhymed.

She opened her eyes in mid-tongue kiss to stare at me. Then she must have remembered who I was, because she instantly turned on a flood of manufactured enthusiasm.

"Kathy!" she gushed, running over to me stiff-legged, as if she were a doll with non-bendable arms extended. I think it was supposed to be an imitation of what she had imagined to be spontaneous joy.

"Madison," I responded, holding out my arms to stop her before she engulfed me in her robotic embrace.

"Well!" she exclaimed with her usual breathless cheer as I fended her off. "How's school? Oh, help me with these things, Harrison. They're color swatches for the Whitfield house."

_Boing_. The Whitfield house. As in living there. I'd known that the time was coming; I'd just hoped that something like an alternate reality would intervene and make it not be so.

"When are you coming?" I asked woodenly.

"Soon. The place is a shambles. Wallpaper, with _borders_. Country everything. A horror. Darling, what do you think of mustard for the living room?"

"Aromatic," he said, although she wasn't listening.

"So how did you like my talk?" Mim went on, pulling out huge collections of fabric samples. She was referring to the all-school assembly she'd arranged to lecture about Wonderland's good works. "At the school," she elucidated in a tone that demanded an answer.

"Oh. Great. I think a lot of people are considering careers in retail." Although this may have been true, I had no idea of the impact of her presentation, because I'd spent the hour in the nurse's office. I just didn't want to have to listen to Mad Madam Mim converting my clueless peers to the gospel according to Wonderland. Actually, most of my peers were in the infirmary with me, trying to convince Nurse Thompson (cowen) that a stomach flu was raging through the school. Only the Muffies were subjected to Mim's exhortations to join the Wonderland family. Since they were already a lost cause, I didn't care if they followed in her venal footsteps.

"Yes, that talk usually goes over well," she said, rummaging in her pocketbook and emerging with a cigarette and a shiny gold lighter.

"I thought you quit smoking," Dad said. That was one – maybe the only one – good thing about my father. He thought smoking was disgusting.

"Bear with me, Darling," she said, exhaling a putrid plume of blue. "A new store brings tremendous pressure. I'll quit once Whitfield opens."

"Until the next time," he muttered. She ignored him.

"Get dressed, Kathy," she said. "We're having dinner at Cibo. You have no idea what I went through to get a reservation."

"Would you mind calling me Katy?" she asked.

She looked blank. "But why should I call you that? It's not your name."

"Neither is Kathy."

She blew smoke into my face. "Just be glad I'm not calling you Serenity," she said, then laughed so uproariously that she began to cough.

My outfit didn't please Mim.

"You look like a waiter."

I glanced down at my black pants and shirt, thinking that maybe they would be enough to get me out of this forced celebration, but no dice.

"Well, you don't have time to change," she sighed. "You'll just have to go as you are." Dad had on a new suit, I noticed, and a pink op-art tie that he would never have chosen for himself. I wondered if Dad would ever get sick of Mim and dump her sorry butt.

The restaurant was very crowded, and we had to wait for our table .Looking around at all the people in Cibo, groomed and gorgeous as show dogs on display, each one vying for attention by showing off their possessions – in Mim's case, my father – I was suddenly bored by the grayness of it all. I looked at my dad, feeling a surge of pity and longing.

My dad had sacrificed everything he'd had to keep me safe after his world fell apart. If he really hadn't cared about me, he could have made a new life for himself and left the horror of what happened in Whitfield _and me_ behind him forever.

But he hadn't. That counted, no matter how frustrated and angry I got. Love counted.

I leaned over and kissed his cheek. It surprised him. For a moment, his whole face lit up. His mouth opened in the kind of stunned delight you usually only see in little children. I didn't know that it would mean so much to him.

"God, that took long enough, Mim said as we were ushered to our table. "I could eat a horse." She pushed the menu aside. "But I'll have a salad."

Dad and I exchanged a look. It meant nothing except that across the ever-widening distance of our two universes, we still loved each other.

Mim consumed her salad, plus the lion's share of three bottles of wine. By the time the bill came, she was extremely happy.

"I'll miss you, Pierre," she said to our waiter, clasping his hand. She also slipped him a fat roll of bills and, I think, her business card. "I'll be leaving for Buttcrack, Nowhere, next week.

I bust out laughing. The waiter clucked sympathetically. Dad looked appalled.

"Do you mean Whitfield, Massachusetts?" I asked, deadpan.

"Site of the next big Wonderland!" she shouted, raising her fist in the air. She tripped over her feet as she rose. Dad put his arm around her. She fumbled in her bag for a cigarette that dangled from her lower lip as we left.

"Yeah, Wonderland," Mim said, lighting up as she slid into the backseat of the taxi.

"No smoking," the driver said.

Mim took a drag, then tossed the cigarette out the window, but not before filling the cab with smoke.

"You should see the place where it's going," Mim went on. "Big old field, right in the middle of town. Waste of prime real estate, absolutely. It's not even a park. No benches, nothing. Waste." She flailed her arms in the air, striking every available surface, including my father and me. "But the worst part – the absolute _worst_ – was getting rid of that voodoo queen who lives there. You know the one I mean?"

My heart felt as if it had exploded in my chest.

"Man! I mean,_ Mon_!" She cackled. "I thought she was going to put the jambalaya curse on me when I told her to get out."

"Hattie?" I squeaked. "You evicted Hattie Scott?"

Mim's face contorted into a belligerent mask. "She was living there illegally, for God's sake. And for God knows how many generations."

"Did you at least pay her?" Dad asked.

"To get off land that she never paid a dime for? Get real. Hey." She slapped the back of the cab driver's head with her pocketbook. "Slow down. We're almost there."

The taxi screeched to a halt and the driver turned around, furious. "Look, lady, you don't hit me, understand? You hit me, I'm gonna call the cops right here, I don't care –"

"Oh. shut up," she said, throwing a bunch of bills at him. Dad got out and ran over to Mim's side of the car so that he could open the door for her. She spilled out of the seat like Jell-O in a silver fox coat.

"Sorry," I said to the driver. It didn't do any good, though. He was still pissed off, even though he was covered in money. I would have been pissed too.

I left the next morning, prematurely. I want to talk to Hattie. And my relatives. And Peter.

My father didn't look me in the eye when I said goodbye. I understood. He knew what he was, what he'd become.

"See you, Dad," I said. He nodded. He was wearing a Dior golf shirt.

"I'll come up for the summer," he said.

"If I let you," Mim joked.

Sort of.

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**A/N: Thanks for reading! Please review!**


	19. Sangoma

**A/N: Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series or Witch & Wizard.**

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**CHAPTER 19: SANGOMA**

The kitchen equipment at Hattie's was gone, leaving big stained areas on the floor where the oven, sinks, refrigerator, and dishwasher had been.

"She gave it all to the school," Peter said. "Miss P's got everything in the maintenance shed."

"I can't believe it," I said. "Hattie's Kitchen, closing for good."

"Closed and demolished," Hattie said, coming down the stairs form her apartment.

She looked tired and thin. The mischievous smile that had always played round the edges of her mouth was gone, replaced by deep furrows. "Will you come in for a cup of tea, Katy?" she offered.

I'd never been upstairs before. She'd decorated the place with a strange but beautiful combination of New England severity and Caribbean whimsy. The ceiling was painted to resemble a blue sky. The doorways were strung with tiny shells that clacked when someone walked through. Some of Eric's toys were strewn on the floor amid the piles of boxes that were already sealed and stacked.

"Where will you be moving?" I asked Peter as Hattie was getting the tea ready.

"We've rented a house near New Town," he said. "It's cheaper there."

"I've been here a long time," Hattie said, returning with a tray. "In 1989 I came back to Whitfield from St. Croix with my skin and next to nothing else . . ." She shook her head slowly, looking into a distance that was hers alone. "That was Hurricane Hugo," she said with a sigh. "The devil wind blew the roof off my house, then reached in and took my boy Dando into the air like he was a stick doll. Where he landed, no one knew. Might still be flying in the thin air, for all that."

I was stunned. "You had a son?" I stammered.

"And a husband. After the hurricane moved on, he went into Christiansted to help pull out people trapped in fallen buildings. He was shot by a looter," she said calmly. She sipped her tea. "So this thing, this Wonderland . . . This is nothing."

I could feel the air fairly crackle with her unspoken emotion.

I drank my tea quickly. "But this place is yours," I said at last. "Gram says it's always been in your family."

"For more than three hundred years. I just don't have a document to prove it."

"I don't suppose the Historical Society was any help," I said.

"Oh, the Historical Society doesn't know squat," she said, dismissing the organization with a wave of her hand.

"We don't even need a Historical Society in Old Town," Peter added. "Everyone here's still living in the past."

We all laughed at that, so loud that Eric woke up in the next room and started to wail.

"Oh, me and my big mouth," Hattie said. "Now, you two keep it down." She got up and left the room.

"I never knew Hattie had a son," I whispered.

Peter nodded. "She doesn't talk about him much," he said. "She grew up here, right in this house. But she met this guy in college. He was from the Caribbean –"

"I'll thank you not to be telling my life story like it was your property, Mr. Shaw," Hattie broke in, leaning against the doorjamb.

"Oh. Sorry Hattie." Peter blushed.

She gave him a sour look. "Was there anything special you were planning to tell our guest about me?"

"No ma'am."

She shifted her guilt-inducing gaze toward me. "And was there anything special you wanted to know about me? Because if there is, I am the person you should be asking, not him."

"Yes, ma'am," I said. I know I should have let it go at that, but I couldn't stop myself. "Actually there is something," I said.

Hattie took a step into the room, her arms folded across her chest. "Yes?" The look on her face was that of a dare. A double-dog dare.

I swallowed. "I was just wondering now you could be forced to leave a place where everyone knows your family has lived for so long. I mean, if there was a deed, it would be hundreds of years old. There must be a way around that."

She sighed. "No, honey," she said. "I'm afraid there isn't. It's just the law. If you got no deed, you got no land. The Shaws have been paying taxes on it, so that makes it theirs. Probably some smart lawyer somewhere along the line came up with the idea to pay those taxes. And the Shaws always had more money than God, anyway, so they never missed that money. Turned out to be a good plan."

"For them," Peter said.

Hattie sat down heavily. "That's a fact. When I came back here after the hurricane, old Jeremiah Shaw came round to tell me I had to pay him rent to stay here. I said my family's been here since before the Constitution, same as his, but old Shaw, he must have been weaned on a pickle, not a spark of nothing in him. He said he'd have to charge me rent because he paid the taxes." She picked up her voluminous hair and hoisted it over the back of her chair like a curtain.

"So you paid him."

"I did. And that made me a tenant in the eyes of the law. Oh, it worked out fine for all this while. Jeremiah didn't mind when I opened the restaurant here. And to be fair, he never even raised my rent. But when he sold the property, it meant that I had to close down and clear out." She smiled ruefully. "Didn't even come here himself to tell me. Wonderland sent some stone-hearted hussy with a piece of paper and a fancy pen."

Now it was my turn to blush. Mad Madam Mim strikes again.

"She offered me twenty-five hundred dollars if I promised not to give any interviews to the press." She guffawed. "Imagine that!"

"Did you take it?" I asked.

"Not exactly." The corners of her mouth were starting to dance again. "The interview was cut short when a tarantula crawled out of her pretty blonde hair and down her pretty pink nose."

The three of us roared with laughter until Hattie shushed us.

"Well, anyway, the upshot of it all," Hattie said, wiping her eyes on the hem of her apron, "is that we've got to get out of here, and fast. So get these boxes moved over by the door, Peter. And be quick about it."

We both got to work on the boxes. "Wouldn't want to interfere with the big Wonderland Egg Hunt," he muttered.

When we were done, I leaned against an empty bookcase, thinking. "Are you sure there ever was a deed?" I asked.

He held out his hands in a _got me_ gesture. "There probably was," he said. "Even in colonial times, people kept accounts about property and ownership."

"And that deed, if it exists at all, would be in the name of Shaw?"

"That's what old Jeremiah claims," Hattie said.

"But we don't know which Shaw, right?"

Peter screwed up his face. "What are you getting at?"

But Hattie understood. She stood as still as a statue, her mind zinging along the same lines as mine.

"Who is Jeremiah in relation to you, Peter?"

"My great-uncle, I think." He thought about it. "No, my great-grandfather's brother. Would that be a great-great-uncle?"

"I don't know. Was your great-grandfather older than Jeremiah?"

"Oh, yeah. Much. They had different mothers. I could check, but I'm pretty sure Jeremiah was younger by more than twenty years."

"So, as the oldest son, your great-grandfather would have inherited the property, not Jeremiah, right? He, then your grandfather, then your father, then you."

Peter's eyes widened. "Oh, I get it," he said. "You think I might own the Meadow." He chuckled. "I wish that were true. Unfortunately, there's one little hitch. The Shaws disinherited me."

"Jeremiah Shaw disinherited you," Hattie broke in. "But your father left you and Eric and everything he owned."

"Whoa. My father wasn't the big moneymaker in the Shaw family. 'Everything he owned' comes down to two houses, and Hattie sold one to pay Eric's medical bills."

"That doesn't matter," I said. "If the deed belongs to you . . ."

Suddenly he got it. "I could stop Wonderland."

The room rang with the silence.

Hattie was the one to break it. "Useless talk," she said flatly. "Prescott Shaw spent a lot of time preparing his will. If the Meadow was yours to inherit, the will would have said so."

Peter frowned. "But he may not have even thought about it," he said. "No one ever imagined that the Meadow would be sold. The deed might still be in the house." He turned to me. "The one that's still in my name. We didn't put it up for sale because we didn't want cowen to move in."

"It's in Old Town?"

"Right on Front Street," Peter said.

"Now, stop getting all excited over the house," Hattie said. "It's unlikely that there's anything of value there besides the furniture. Prescott never even lived in that old place. No one has, for decades."

"He kept it up, though. That was in his will –"

"Oh, no, no you don't!" Hattie shook an angry finger at him. "Don't you even think about going there! If that place isn't condemned, it ought to be."

Eric screamed again. Hattie clucked in exasperation. "Katy, Sweetie, I surely do appreciate your company, but we've got a lot to do here."

"I understand," I said. "I'll be going."

"Thanks for stopping by."

"I'll help you move when the time comes," I said. I turned to Peter. "Walk me to my bike?"

"My pleasure," he said.

"Peter!" It was Hattie.

"Just a second, okay?" He motioned for me to wait.

He took longer than I'd thought. I was about to let myself out when Peter came back into the living room. Eric was still screaming. He opened the door and led me out, signaling for me to be quiet.

Outside, he took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. "Eric drew this," he said, unfolding the paper.

It was a mass of color, brilliant oranges and reds and yellows, so real I could almost feel the flames they depicted.

"Fire," I said needlessly. "The third harbinger."

"Are you surprised?" he asked.

"Not really."

"Me neither."

I folded up the drawing and gave it back to him. "Do you think the deed might be in that old house you were talking about?"

"It might," he said. "It'd be worth a look, anyway."

"Where is it?"

He gestured with his chin. "I'll show you."

Two streets away he pointed out a huge rickety-looking Victorian mansion with a wraparound porch and a widow's walk surrounding the upper story. "It was built in 1802," Peter said. "When my great-grandfather died, he left the houses to all his children. My grandfather inherited this one. He died in the Vietnam War. My father never lived here, but he liked this place. He'd come for a few days now and then. Or so people tell me. Anyway, since he died, it's been kept up by lawyers. No one's even allowed inside, except for maintenance people."

I was amazed. "Are you telling me that no one's lived here since your great-grandfather?"

"He may not have, either," Peter said with a smile. "The Shaws own a lot of houses. This one's pretty much a throwaway."

"Is there anything in it?"

"Everything, I think. I mean, the furniture and things have never been catalogued or auctioned. I used to break in and hand out inside. It's fitted with an alarm system, but I've got a key to turn it off." He shrugged. "Sometimes I just like to be alone."

I clutched his arm. "Then the deed might be there."

"That's what I was thinking. But Hattie said . . ."

"She doesn't have to know."

"She'll know if we find it," he reasoned.

"We can worry about that after we find it," I said.

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**A/N: Please review!**


	20. Maleficium

**A/N: Sorry for the wait. I've been really focused on my other stories lately and haven't had time to type. Here it is though, so enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own it. I only own the ideas. **

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**CHAPTER 20: MALEFICIUM**

Peter and I met up at eight a.m. on the Saturday before Easter, telling our respective keepers that we were checking out the big Wonderland spring extravaganza. I felt disloyal telling that to Gram, but the Wonderland site was the only place where we knew neither Hattie nor my relatives would ever set foot. So they wouldn't know that we weren't there.

The Shaw mansion on Front Street wasn't anything like the haunted house vision I'd conjured. Apparently a team of bonded cleaners came once a month to polish the wood and vacuum the rugs. Ditto the exterminator. Twice a year the place was gone over by a building inspector to make sure electricity and plumbing were in order and to check the roof. So much for Hattie's worries about the place being unsafe.

It was almost weird how clean it was considering the last time anyone lived there was over sixty years ago.

"It looks like it's in better shape than it actually is," Peter said. "Hattie considered selling it to a funeral home once, but they rejected it because the plumbing was too ancient. I don't know how much it costs just to keep it standing."

"Why hasn't someone torn it down, then?" I asked.

"Historical landmark," Peter said.

Walking through the rooms of the house, it was hard to keep my mind on the task at hand. It was like visiting a museum, or some European castle. All of the furniture was antique and beautiful. There were rolltop desks, hideaway tables, bookcases with secret doors that opened into other rooms, porcelain sinks with some long-departed Shaw's initials fired into them, massive mirrored armories, and a lot of pieces whose name or function I could not fathom.

"This is a dower chest," Peter explained, opening a long, elaborately carved piece. "It's to carry a bride's dowry."

"Guess the Shaws got their fair share of those," I said. We went through the chest very carefully. Inside were bolts of silk, stained by time despite the care taken to preserve them.

We likewise went through a linen press, hunting cabinet, several gaming tables, a prayer chair, a gigantic black carved display case called a Shibayanna, a smoking stand still containing a tin of tobacco, and a bedside potty which was fortunately empty, plus any number of buffets, servers, cupboards, jewelry cabinets, highboys, dressers, vanities, and bureaus.

It was nearly three in the afternoon by the time we reached the top floor of the house.

"These would have been servants' quarters," Peter said. "I doubt we'll find any important papers here."

"Well, we might as well look anyway," I insisted, even though I knew that he was probably right.

I'd known it was a long shot from the beginning. Beyond a long shot, really. But I was still disappointed because finding the deed in Peter's house was the only thing I could think of to save Hattie's home.

The furniture on this floor was very different from what we'd seen in the rest of the house. Here were narrow and metal beds, utilitarian bathrooms, and unadorned fireplaces. There were only a few plain wooden pieces here, things designed for servants with few personal possessions.

"Look at this," I said, pointing out a little chest of drawers. It must have been for a children's room originally."

"Maybe. Some items were made small as space savers, though. They were called miniatures. I think this one. You see, it's really two chests, side by side, connected by a clasp or something here in the back . . ." He reached behind it to manipulate a mechanism. With a loud click, something fell into place, and Peter swung the two chests apart so that they were now back to back.

I wasn't impressed. "Cute, but what's the point of it?" I sneered. "I mean, it doesn't save any more space in either position." I opened one of the drawers. It fell out into my hands.

Peter took it. "It is pretty useless, I admit," he said. "Look at this drawer. It's only about ten inches deep."

I reached into the space where the drawer had been. "Maybe there's something else here . . ." There was. Something snapped. With an embarrassing squeal, I jumped backward.

The chest separated again, this time horizontally.

Carefully Peter pushed the sides apart. By now the piece had expand considerably. He went to the other side, removed the drawer, and popped the mechanism behind it. Again it opened, revealing other drawers, each one smaller than the previous ones, until we were looking at tiny spaces just big enough for a pair of earrings.

"Can you believe this?" he said in astonishment.

"It's a botte," I whispered.

"A what?" Peter raised an eyebrow.

"A magic box." Again, disappointment nibbled at me. "Only it's not really magic. It's mechanical." Just like Dad said it would be.

"This is probably the most valuable thing in the house," he said. "I wonder why it was put up here."

I took out the bottom drawer. "Because of this," I said, feeling my heart start to thud. Beneath the drawer was a hidden compartment cut into the floor. "It was used to hide things." I reached inside, and felt the rustling of fine, thin tissue. "There's something here," I said, feeling as if I were going to jump out of my skin.

"Do you need help?" he asked. "Or a flashlight?"

I shook my head. Whatever was in there was bulky, but not heavy. I pulled out a wad of what looked like gorgeous handmade paper, and laid it on the floor beside me.

"Could it be documents?" Peter asked, touching the bundle gingerly.

Slowly I unwrapped it. First the paper, then the layer of fabric beneath it, exposing a long roll of something that smelled faintly of cedar. I unrolled it, holding my breath.

It was a baby blanket.

"A blanket?" Peter asked.

The treasure I'd unwrapped so painstakingly was a beautifully preserved linen quilt inscribed with embroidered words grown faint with time.

I felt as if the last train had just left town. There wasn't anywhere else to look.

"What's it say?" he asked, squinting at the embroidery.

I read it aloud the best I could:

_The wise and Crafty know rightly where to look._

_O Word! Spring forth from out thy secret nook._

_Feree Ferraugh diten al blosun na tibuk._

"Kind of an odd thing to put on a baby blanket," he said.

"No lie." I felt in the pockets of my jeans. "Do you have a cell phone? I asked. He handed it to me, and I took a picture of the blanket. "Who knows," I said. "Maybe that's what deeds looked like back then."

Peter didn't answer. He knew that I was grasping at straws.

I rooted around in the compartment to see if there was anything else inside it. There wasn't. I sighed. "I guess it was precious to someone," I said, running my hands over the blanket. It made me think about Hattie and her terrible story. It had been as if a door in her memory had accidently popped open, revealing a room that had been locked and sealed for decades, a pharaonic tomb of a memory in which a little boy named Dando blew away in the wind and never returned. "She's already been through so much," I said. "I wanted to help her keep her house."

"It'll be all right," Peter said. "Things will be tight without the restaurant, but we'll . . ." Frowning, he walked toward the window that overlooked the widow's walk. "I smell something," he said.

Now that he mentioned it, I did too. Something was burning.

"Oh, no."

I jumped up. "What is it?"

Just then, an enormous tongue of flame shot out of the fireplace and into the middle of the room.

I screamed.

Maybe it was just my imagination, because I only saw it for a split second, but the fire that came into the room seemed somehow _solid_, as if it had a skin around it like a living thing. And worse – and this is the part that's so hard to believe that I didn't even mention it to the police afterward – _it had a face_.

Yes.

A horrific face, a demon's face, looking right at me.

"Peter!" I gasped.

"Stay with me," he said, taking my hand. As we made our way down the back stairs, he opened up his cell phone. "The house we're in is on fire," he told the 911 operator, giving the address.

"Did you see it?" I asked, stumbling down the darkened stairs.

"Don't talk." He pushed me along.

The smoke was thick in the stairway. I pulled up the neck of my shirt to cover my nose and mouth, all the while remembering the fire and its vicious eyes staring directly at me.

"I think we're at the second floor landing," he said, taking me around this waist. "Watch your step."

As he spoke, there was a burst of sudden light as the short cotton curtains over the landing window caught fire, illuminating our surroundings.

It was like a vision of Fell. The smoke lay black and thick as oil, while all around us erupted explosions of fire. Pieces of the ceiling rained down on us; the electrical wiring beneath it sparked and sizzled.

"What's going on?" I shrilled, near hysteria. Two minutes before, there was nothing. Now all of a sudden the entire place was an inferno.

"I'm here," Peter coughed, propelling me through a maze of bedrooms and hallways until we reached the main stairway. It was burning as well, the banisters blazing like pillars of flame. Peter took my hand, and we raced down the stairs. "They're still solid," he said. "All we have to –"

At that moment a ball of fire erupted in front of us, forcing us backward with its heat.

"The library," Peter said. I nearly cried with relief. I remembered that there was an outside door there, leading to a long set of stone steps curving between the first and second floors. We were racing toward it when our way was blocked by a series of whooshing fires that ignited like a row of giant candles – one, two, three, four, five – at an unbelievable speed.

We ducked through the nearest doorway in a spacious bathroom covered in tiny blue tiles. A wall of long oval mirrors framed in oak reproduced our reflections many times over. I caught sight of my face, terrified, blackened by smoke. Then, in another instant, the glass shattered and I watched the image of myself blow apart. Flames shot out of the sink and bathtub fixtures like dragon's breath. The tile beneath our feet cracked in crazed lines.

"The floor's going to give," Peter said, yanking the Battenberg lace curtains off the windows and stuffing them around the blazing faucets of the sink. Then he kicked out the glass and hoisted me up onto the wide windowsill. "There's thick ivy all over this outside wall," he told me. "We can climb down, but we have to move fast."

I took a look at the faucets. Already the fabric Peter had put around them was catching fire. Outside, I gauged the distance to the ground. At least twenty feet.

"I'll keep you safe," he said quietly. "I promise." He nodded, and I took that as a signal. I climbed out, my hands shaking so badly that I could barely grab the ivy. Moving sideways like a crab, trying to slip the toes of my sneakers beneath the strong woody vines, I watched him crawl onto the wall beside me.

"Are you all right?" he asked. I nodded uncertainly. "Good. Just keep your hands on the ivy. We're going to climb down now. I'll be right here beside you the whole time."

"O-o-okay," I stammered. I twisted my fingers around the ivy and took a step down.

"That's it," he said. "It won't be far, but don't look down."

I didn't. I looked up. What I saw was the ivy catching fire as if the leaves were made of paper. Down it came, almost in a perfect line, burning one inch at a time.

"Peter," I croaked. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was as if the fire were coming after us. "The ivy . . ."

It began to move faster.

"Get on my back," he commanded, watching the flames speed toward us. "Now, as fast as you can."

I reached over and put my arm around his neck. Then I swung my leg over until he was carrying all my weight. Above, the fire was catching up, only four or five feet away from his hands. Peter moved swiftly, one powerful arm at a time, the muscles of his back tensing and quivering as the heat began to burn his fingers. Once he lost his footing and we both nearly fell, but I grabbed onto some ivy while he found a purchase.

"Get back on," he said.

"I think I can –"

"No, you can't," he said. "Hurry up." I grabbed onto him again and he moved faster, keeping pace with the thing that was following us, staying one step ahead of the fire.

Then, with a _whoosh_, the flames dropped downward like a curtain, spilling over Peter's hands.

A soft cry escaped his lips.

"Peter," I whispered. His hands were blistering in the flames, and his whole body trembled with pain. I knew I was slowing him down so much that there was a chance that neither of us would survive.

"Hang on," he growled.

He deserved better odds than this. "I can't, Peter," I said, and let go.

I heard the fire trucks coming. When I opened my eyes, Peter was holding me. "Why'd you let go?" he whispered.

I sat up, feeling sore but basically unhurt. I guess I just got the wind knocked out of me. But Peter . . . I took his bloody hands in my own. Just seeing them made my heart hurt. "Are you . . . Are you all right?" I asked.

"I'm fine," he lied. He was looking at the fire that was running down the wall like melting wax, more slowly now, as if it knew we'd escaped. "That's not natural."

"I know," I said, shivering. "Peter, did you see –"

He put his arm around me and pulled me up, wincing. The fire had reached ground level, and was sizzling its way toward us along the grass. "We have to go," he said.

I was scared. How far was it going to chase us? Because there was no doubt in my mind anymore. The fire was in pursuit, and we were its target.

"What the hell kind of a fire is this?" I heard one of them shout over the din of machinery and pumping water.

Another – I guess he was the chief – stopped us. "You the ones who called in?"

"Yes," Peter said.

As the fireman asked us questions, I hung onto Peter as if we were a lifebuoy and I were in the middle of the ocean.

In the distance the house steamed and smoked as the water doused it. With a crack, part of the porch collapsed. One of the chimneys broke off and tumbled along the roof, crashing onto the circular driveway.

It looked, for all the world, as if the house were dying.

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**A/N: Please review? :)**


	21. Djinn

**A/N: I am so sorry for taking so long. I have two other stories going, and now I am back in school so you can imagine that I have a lot on my plate right now. Along with being pregnant. Like I always say though, I will never abandon a story. Once I start something, I finish it. Anyways, enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own it. **

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**CHAPTER 21: DJINN**

The sky on the day of the official Wonderland groundbreaking ceremony was sunny, but the mood of the Old Town residents was anything but.

They had given the Meadow a very wide berth, especially since Hattie's Kitchen was torn down. But on this Saturday morning they were out in force. Most of the twenty-seven families, including several who no longer lived in Whitfield, showed up. In fact, aside from the mayor and a few Wonderland officials whose job it was to attend these things, almost all of the people who came to the event were witches.

I was there with Agnes and Gram. It was the first time I'd been allowed out of the house since the Shaw mansion burned down. They wouldn't even let me stay in my dorm room.

I suppose I should have been grateful, though. It could have been a lot worse. As it was, my aunt and great-grandmother and Hattie managed to contain the situation with only the minor consequence of keeping Peter and me under lock and key for the rest of our lives.

Naturally, the police didn't believe us when we told them that the fire had started spontaneously, or that it had spread in the bizarre way that we described, but in the end, it was decided that there was no evidence of arson, and the burned house technically belonged to Peter, then no charges would be filed.

That did not, however, exempt us from Hattie's wrath. When she came into the police station to claim Peter, I thought the walls were going to burst apart.

"Do you have any idea of the value of the objects in that house?" she demanded angrily.

"I'm sorry," Peter began. "We didn't –"

"No you did not! You have no idea how many priceless antiques burned to ash because you couldn't see fit to listen to me when I told you to stay away from that place!"

"That's –"

"Don't you talk back to me!" she shouted. I could see the duty officer sinking down in his chair.

"Yes ma'am."

"I want to know what you were doing there after I expressly forbade you to go?"

"We were looking for the deed," I broke in, trying to help Peter out of the deep whole that we were both dug into.

"Was I talking to you?" she demanded, turning on me. "Did I ask you to say something?"

"No," I said.

"You placed every house on Front Street, and every family who lives there, in mortal danger."

By now Peter and I both knew better than to answer. It was a good thing, too, because at that moment Gram and Aunt Agnes walked in and stood next to Hattie, all of them glaring at the two of us. It was like being stared down by the three witches from Macbeth – red eyes, vibrating ears, fingers sparking with blue light. The officer on duty didn't seem to notice, but Peter and I could feel the air being sucked out of the room.

"Now I am going to ask you both one question, and one question only, and the answer had better be the truth, because if it isn't, I will find out," Hattie said. "Is that clear?"

I nodded, shook my head, and then nodded again.

"Did you in any way cause a fire to break out in the Shaw house?" she asked levelly.

"No ma'am," Peter said.

"In _any_ way," she repeated.

"No we did not," I said.

"Neither of you, together or separately?"

"No Hattie," I said. "The fire just happened. And then it came after us."

"It _came after_ you?" the officer scoffed.

"Stay out of this," Hattie snapped. He sank back in his chair.

She stared at Peter and me for a very long moment. Finally she inhaled, raised her head, and said, "I believe you."

We both sighed with relief . . . until I got a better look at my relatives. Their bad vibrations were obviously undiminished by Hattie's not-guilty verdict. They are usually very nice people, really, but at that moment I could have sworn that little silver darts were shooting out of their identical eyes. Coronas of dark fury circled their heads.

It was because of Peter, I knew. They hadn't liked the idea of my seeing him even after he'd proven that he wasn't cowen and had earned the right to stay in Old Town. I don't think they had anything against him personally, but there was some mighty bad feeling against the Shaws in general. And of course it all came down on Peter.

"You will come with us," Aunt Agnes said, after all the paperwork had been gone through. Gram nodded goodbye to the officer, who never moved an inch.

"And you," Hattie said, blocking my way so that I would be sure to hear what she was saying to Peter, "will not see Katy again outside of school. Do you agree?"

Peter looked at me, and then back at her. "No," he said.

The police officer rested his head in his hand. I think he really wanted us all to leave.

Agnes nudged me. "It's all right Peter," I said. "It won't be forever."

"Don't hold your breath," Hattie said.

At least I'd been allowed to leave Gram's house occasionally. Peter hadn't even been permitted to attend the Wonderland groundbreaking, which hardly promised to be the social event of the year.

Still, it drew a huge crowd, and the sheer number of attendees lent a festive air to the proceedings. Someone had set up a funnel cake stand, and several hawkers walked around offering soft drinks for two dollars a can. Mabel Bean, who was Miss P's mother, was doing a brisk business selling her famous blueberry cookies from a folding card table. Sharing it was a crafter who made swans out of wheat. All in all, it promised to be a better time than I'd thought.

Except for Mim. At exactly nine a.m., she appeared in the center of the roped-off area set aside for the groundbreaking. She was wearing hard hat and a pink Prada suit. In her manicured hands (her nails painted in "Crucial Fuschial") was a shovel.

She was already irritated, I could tell. The shovel, which probably should have been gleaming and new for the occasion, had instead been covered with dried mud and tar and other unspeakable forms of detritus. Also, the handle must have had grease or something on it because she was dangling it between her index finger and thumb. While the mayor of Whitfield (cowen) was introducing her, she kept shooting threatening looks at the workmen – whom she had undoubtedly offended in some horrific ye typical manner – lined up behind her, their expressions those of perfect innocence.

". . . and here, representing the Wonderland Corporation, is Mizz Madison Mimson!"

She held up a hand, as if to quiet the thunderous cheers of the crowd, although at that point all you could hear were a couple of crickets. "First, I want to thank you all for this terrific turnout," she began, beaming, "because Wonderland isn't just a business, even though it will bring _hundreds _of jobs into Whitfield . . ." (a pause here for more applause that never came). "It's also a – _aggh_!"

Her left foot, shod also in Prada, sank into the ground.

"Sinkhole," someone near me whispered, but a couple of people, including Miss P's mother, shook their heads. A faint smile played at the corners of Mrs. Bean's lips as she bit into one of her cookies.

Mim, however, was not smiling. Leaning heavily on her shovel, she pulled her out of the mud with a sucking sound, then went after the shoe that had been left in the muck. She had to dig as far as her elbows to retrieve it.

"It's also a family," she went on doggedly, apparently trying to decide whether or not to put on the mud-soaked shoe. "And so, without further . . ."

This time I saw it. At least three people shot five fingers at Mim. A moment later, her right foot sank into the ground.

"Where are the geologists?" she demanded. The mayor came over making sympathetic noises while at the same time trying to keep some distance between her and his own impeccable ensemble.

She tried to stick the shovel into the ground – which, of course, was hard as a rock – to pull her leg out of the muck. Now she was barefoot, covered in mud up to her knees, her pink suit daubed with brown blobs, but undaunted.

"Without further ado . . ."

From my vantage point, everyone in the crowd with the exception of my relatives and Miss P, who was standing some distance away, was pretending to be scratching behind their ears. I could actually see the spells shooting out their fingers en masse as, with a blood-curdling scream, Mim dropped waist-deep into a churning pool of mud.

"Damn it!" she screeched, flinging away the shovel as if it were a javelin. "What kind of fricking–" At that moment, a toad leaped out of the mud onto her head. Her arms flailed, sloshing mud across her face. Another toad appeared. Then another, until she was surrounded by dozens of croaking amphibians leaping animatedly around her.

"You!" she called to the mayor, who was backing away, his face a mask of horror.

Then from out of the muck slithered a fat eel the size of an anaconda that wound around Mim's waist and worked its way up her torso until it wrapped around her head like a turban.

"Get this thing off me!" she wailed as the eel settled in. The toads bounced merrily. Big bubbles formed on the surface of the mud and burst, releasing odiferous gases into the air.

A lot of the onlookers had their cellphones held high, taking pictures. The soda vendors made another sweep. Schoolchildren were shooting five fingers willy-nilly, producing things like frog eggs and rabbit droppings and shrieking with delight.

Miss P pushed her way through the crowd. "Mother!" she shouted. Her mom turned to look at her and giggled. Gram hid her mouth behind a lace handkerchief as the mayor retreated out of the Meadow into a waiting limo.

"You get back here!" Mim screeched as the limo sped away. Seething with frustration, she knocked the eel to the ground and grasped it below its head, apparently attempting to strangle it with her bare hands.

She was tough, I'll give her that.

"Go home, Wonderland!" someone in the crowd called. That set off a chorus of jeers and anti-Wonderland epithets as Mim finally released the startled eel and hoisted herself out of the mudhole.

"We don't want your stinking store!" someone else shouted.

I think that must have been the last straw for her. Looking like a _Velociraptor_ that had just fought its way out of a tar pit, Mim reared back on her sturdy if filthy legs and bellowed, "Well you're going to get it whether you want it or not, you low-life jerks!"

The Wonderland executives who, to tell the truth, hadn't offered much help or support from the beginning, looked stricken. One took out a notepad and wrote something down. The construction guys remained in position, chortling.

Then an egg flew over the heads of the crowd and splatted against Mim's forehead.

"Now, that's enough!" The person who spoke was, of all people, Miss P. Even angry, she looked like a cute cartoon version of a mouse. What was weird, though – really weird – was that I'd _heard_ her. I saw her when she said it, but she hadn't been standing nearby, and there had been a lot of noise.

What was even more weird was that the crowd dispersed almost immediately after that – so quickly, in fact, that Mim herself was left standing virtually alone in the Meadow, seething, ready to fight anyone who cared to take her on.

I felt sorry for her, not because she was covered in but, or even because she'd momentarily had the pants scared oof her, but because she'd been made aware of how much she was hated.

"Can I help you?" I offered, walking up to her.

"Come to gloat," she sneered, trying to sweep the egg off her face with a tissue from her pocketbook. "Well, get your fill now, 'cause times are going to change."

I held out a wad of tissues for her. She snatched them out of my hand and tried to wipe off her mud-caked legs. She was blinking a lot. I think she was trying not to cry.

"Katy!" Aunt Agnes called. I looked over my shoulder at her.

"Go," Mim said quietly. "I'll be okay." She held up the filthy tissues. "Thanks for these." She smiled. "Katy."

As I neared the edge of the Meadow, I saw Mim pick up her things and turn on the construction guys. "Get to work!" she snarled, clutching her mud-filled shoes to her chest.

The men laughed. One of them saluted. Then, as they conferred – no doubt about how to proceed, given that a second sinkhole had appeared on the site – Miss P ventured forward, her hands on her slim hips.

I don't know if anyone else saw it or not. Certainly not the construction guys. And most of the people at the groundbreaking (a funny word, considering just how the ground had broken) had already left. But I swear, before my very eyes the mudhole cleared up, drying in concentric circles from the outside in.

It happened in about five seconds. The toads vanished into the shrinking hole, then the eel slithered in, and the place was bone dry again, without so much as a dent in the ground. Mim's shovel lay on top, unused.

When Miss P turned around to leave, I caught her eye. She blushed, embarrassed, and moved past me without a word.

Agnes, who had been talking with Gram, motioned for me to join them.

"It wasn't a sinkhole," I said breathlessly.

"Of course not," Gram said. "That was all a prank."

"A prank that nearly got badly out of hand," Agnes said tartly.

I looked back at the site. The construction guys were gathered in a circle around where the mudhole had been, scratching their heads.

"Did you hear Miss P?" I asked.

"What did she say?"

"I think she said 'That's enough,' or something like that."

"Oh. Yes, of course. Everyone heard her. That's why they left."

"What?" I thought I'd heard wrong. "Are you saying she . . . _commanded_ them?"

Agnes and Gram exchanged a glance. Gram nodded once, then cleared her throat. "Penelope Bean is a djinn," she said. "We are fortunate to have her in our community. Djinns are among the rarest of all witches."

"A djinn?" I repeated stupidly. For some reason, the word conjured images of half-naked male genies materializing out of bottles.

"She willed those people to stop tormenting that dreadful woman," she went on, her eyes darting around secretively. "But you mustn't tell anyone. Most of the people who were here don't even know what caused them to leave." She smiled sweetly. "It's better that way, you know."

"Miss P, a djinn," I marveled over tea. "I never would have thought. I mean, she seems so . . . _harmless_."

"That's exactly the sort of person a djinn ought to be," Agnes said. "The ability to bend others' will to one's own can be very dangerous in the wrong hands. People can be easily corrupted by such power.

"When Mabel Bean discovered what her Penelope could do, she enlisted the help of all the most powerful witches in Whitfield to train her."

"Train her for what?"

"Mostly, to use her gift as infrequently as possible," Agnes said. "So try not to speak of it, Katy. Not only does Miss P find public attention extremely unwelcome, but you can imagine how badly she could be misused if her gift were known to all, especially cowen."

"Gracious!" Gram fell back in her chair as if the thought were too much for her to bear.

I thought about it. I'd heard about djinn, but they were so unusual that I never thought that I'd ever even meet one, let alone attend a school where a djinn worked as assistant headmistress. "What happens if . . ." I simply couldn't refer to her as a djinn without picturing her in harem pants and a veil and sliding out of a lamp shaped like a neti pot. ". . . if people like Miss P aren't trained?"

"Exactly what you think would happen when people discover that they have complete power over nearly everyone on earth," Agnes said. "They become vile creatures. Monsters, if you will."

I had a sudden vision of Miss P controlling the Muffies at Ainsworth School so that they all wore sensible shoes and sweatshirts with appliqued bunnies. "I mean, what do we do with them?"

Gram answered. "We send them away, to live among cowen," she said with a definitive nod. "Serves them right."

"Since they aren't trained, they can't really use their gift effectively, anyway," Agnes said. "But they do very well in the military. Also, unfortunately, in gangs, organized crime, politics, and in many religions as well. Anything that demands unquestioning obedience. They make excellent leaders, as you may expect. However, it is nearly impossible for them to not be corrupted by the power they are accorded."

"But that won't happen with Penelope Bean," Gram said, recovering herself. "She may not look it, but she is our strongest defense."

"Against what?" I asked.

She opened her mouth to speak, but then thought better of it. But Agnes looked straight at me, a fierce look in her eyes. "Against what we all know is coming," she said.

I shuddered.

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**A/N: Please review! I haven't gotten one for quite a while and would really appreciate it! I'll update as soon as I can. :)**


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